Mr. Ken Whyte:

If I was to be blunt, I would say the leaving certificate does not prepare students for anything. It is simply designed to assess a certain amount of knowledge at a particular point in time to facilitate entry to another process. It is a gate and no more than that. One of the reasons we have been so supportive of the leaving certificate applied model is that it has a broad range of competencies that are assessed on an ongoing basis over the two-year period. If one was being very honest, the answer to the Deputy's question is it does not prepare students.

To be fair, it probably is not designed to do so. It is designed to fulfil a certain other purpose. Perhaps the question about leaving certificate reform should be turned on its head to look at what we do want the examination to do in the first place, after which we can work back and consider how we assess it.