Mr. Ciar?n Duffy:

Senator O'Reilly asked about the CBAs. She asked if continuous assessment is not suitable for STEM or whether it should be delivered in a different way. The vast majority of our members would say that CBAs are not suitable. However, we would probably not go as far as calling for them to be scrapped completely. What we would ask is that they would be tweaked slightly and that serious consideration would be given to the implementation of only one CBA over the two years. What we need to give serious consideration to is whether students need to do nine CBAs or possibly ten, in second year and then an additional nine or ten in third year for which they are now only getting their junior cycle profile of achievement of official results from the Department of Education in recent months. These students are now in fifth year, having done their junior cycle either last year or the year before, depending on Covid restrictions.

We have done two surveys of our members and approximately 450 people replied to each of them, one in 2022 and one just before this session today. Some 98% of our respondents replied that they would like one CBA only in the two years. Almost 90% said that they did not find the CBAs beneficial for their students, but this must be taken in consideration with what is perceived and what is actually true, namely, the loss of time of that teachers are feeling with the teaching of the specification of the syllabus for mathematics. We still have 240 hours for maths. There is no issue with that. That is great, but we are now looking at taking three weeks out in both second and third year to do this CBA.

We are looking at taking three weeks out in both second and third year to do this CBA. We know the powers that be would suggest we are using this as a teaching moment as well, but that is really not the reality on the ground.