Mr. Dalton Tattan:

The point about continuous assessment is interesting. We currently completely rely on external assessment with events. Somebody goes in to sit an examination or for an oral or practical examination. More continuous assessment would almost necessarily involve school-based involvement at some level, with teachers potentially being more involved in assessing students in some way. Other systems have that approach. There is a high level of trust in the leaving certificate and its reliability, since it is external, anonymous and so on. It is not that we should not be thinking about this. We should be thinking about it, but there are implications to it and other systems are prepared to go down routes like this, potentially with external moderation to ensure fairness. It would be a marked change of approach to the current approach. We would have to think carefully about how we would properly support teachers to do that in a way that would work for them and for students.

I agree with the Senator about encouraging the practical side of things. Going back to the experience of secondary education in Ireland, we want, as far as we can, to properly equip students for the next stage of their lives, whether that is higher education, further education and training, apprenticeships, work, or whatever they choose to do. They should be properly prepared for that. When one looks at how the leaving certificate is currently constructed and the examination can dominate the experience of the last year or two of school, we have to question whether we are doing that correctly.