Professor Áine Hyland:

On the modularisation, obviously, if a subject were to be modularised, it would have to happen at the point at which the curriculum was being revised. That is why I am disappointed the NCCA did not look at anything that was different. A certain approach was assumed and it is beginning to revise all of the syllabi along an assumed traditional approach. There has been no thinking outside of the box and trying to think of a new way of doing it. We had to do it in the university sector as part of the Bologna process. I was very involved in training the teachers in my own university in Cork over the past 20 years in revising the syllabi to ensure they were modularised and semesterised. It was an extraordinarily positive experience in which we all had to look at our own work, what we were teaching, how we would reorganise the courses into six- or 12-week modules and examine them at the end.

One would do the same thing with the leaving certificate. In some of the subjects, it would work; in some subjects, it might be more difficult. However, many of the subjects would, in fact, lend themselves to that. Starting in fifth year, and assuming there is a two-year leaving certificate programme involving a national externally assessed examination, the syllabi must be devised and planned in that way so that at the time the students sit Christmas tests, certain aspects would begin to feed into it, so that the students would be built up over the two-year period. I am assuming a lot of that marking would be done externally. I take the point Professor Stobart has made, but as I said, I have worked in the system for forty-odd years. I have waited to see if the teachers would change their attitude. I was one of the first members of the curriculum examiner board 40 years ago. We were all in favour of having the teachers assess their own students for certification. It has not happened. I am much more pragmatic at this stage. Since it has not happened, can we afford to wait another 40 years? My proposal would be doable now.