Mr. Dalton Tattan:

I thank the Deputy for those questions. To respond to the first one, I have read the transcript of the recent meeting at which business groups appeared before the committee. It is concerning to hear that sort of feedback from employers. As I said in my opening statement, we want to prepare students for the next stage of their lives, whether that is further and higher education, work or whatever else. We have invested a lot in this area. A literacy and numeracy strategy was devised a number of years ago in response to an international study in which it was found that literacy scores had seemed to drop somewhat. Overall, studies such as that carried out by the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA, put us very high up, really at world leader level, for literacy, and we continue to invest in that area. As well as the absolute skills which everybody coming out of school must have, there are also those transversal skills which we have sought to inculcate, particularly at junior cycle level. We would like to see more of that happen in schools right through to the end of upper secondary education. I refer to skills such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking and so on, which we know are hugely valued and important in the 21st century.

To respond to Deputy Farrell's second question about the work done to date, some information is available through the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA. It has published a number of reports and interim reports and some other studies that have been done, including materials for the OECD and the ESRI. They are available online. I accept the core point about the report itself not being available at this stage.

The Deputy asked about the rebalancing between the terminal exam and other forms of assessment such as continuous assessment. We do not have any fixed view on that. From talking to students and others in the system, and I am thinking of the voices of students in particular, I understand that they have sought that idea of trying to spread the assessment load. We see a lot of merit in that. We are not putting a figure on it. If we are to have more continuous assessment, it needs to be meaningful. It has to be real. It cannot constitute a very low percentage of the overall assessment. It has to be something significant in order for us to demonstrate that sort of change.