Mr. John Irwin:

I fully accept that the data need to be updated. However, the Department has established a baseline. It is about trying to work off that baseline to do comparative analyses. The data are not there to do that. The current crop of students are going through unique times in Irish education. The support they need at the moment is to fill gaps in many respects. People will remember that with calculated grades and accredited grades, there was a focus on ensuring that our leaving certificate students, coming out of post-primary school, would have the opportunity to transition to further education. However, some students who were in first or second year in school had terrible experiences. Some of those lower secondary students had terrible experiences. That has consequences and we will see them in the coming years. We are going to have to work continually for those students to try to ensure we can improve their experiences.

The data do not indicate we are significantly behind other countries in respect of STEM subjects. The data show we compare very well. The very top cohort is where we are not performing to the same level as we are performing with the other cohorts of students. We will invest €2.6 billion this year on the provision of special educational needs. There is a presumption in education that while we support students with additional education needs, the brighter students will be looked after anyway. That is not correct.