Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister indicated that the State Examinations Commission will, initially, continue to set the paper and assess the exams in the case of three subjects.

Will the Minister give a commitment that we will continue to have a State-certified junior certificate examination and that in future we will also have independent assessment of junior certificate examinations?

Let us consider the position. My party fully supports the need for junior certificate reform and the reasons behind it. That is why we initiated the process of consultation and reform which the Minister is now carrying on. However, the move to make the junior certificate examination a low stakes examination, a move we support, can be done without making it an examination which is not assessed by the State and which is not a state-certified examination. We need to retain that aspect of it.

Teachers and parents will make the point to the Minister. A person is not supposed to examine his own work. Teachers have made points about examining students' work, but we should recognise that in marking examination papers, teachers are also marking themselves in some ways in terms of how their classes have done. Students, parents and teachers need to have confidence that if a student is doing an examination in Carndonagh Community School, the result can be benchmarked against the result that a student gets in another school in another part of the country.

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