Mr. Dalton Tattan:

It is an interesting point. We should be open to considering any of these possibilities. The sort of scenario the Deputy has painted is one that would certainly have the potential to help students in alleviating some of the stress. However, a couple of things strike me that mean we have to think carefully about it. One issue is that a very modularised experience might not be as positive for students. For example, we could decide that the oral examinations should happen at the end of fifth year. Nobody would think that a good idea because a major part of the experience of pursuing a language subject could potentially fall away at a very early stage. That does not mean there are not some aspects we could do earlier in the two-year cycle and that could potentially include things in fifth year if we thought that was appropriate. An argument is often made, quite rightly, that spreading these assessment events out ought to reduce the stress levels but there is a risk if there are a lot of them, or if we start to introduce lots of different assessment components across the range of subjects, that students could be hitting assessment events on a regular basis. That could impact on what is happening in the classroom as they would not be able to see beyond the next practical, the next project or whatever it might be. We have to be careful and structure things in such a way that they do not have unintended consequences.