Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I presume those public servants will include people like me, who were trained as primary or secondary teachers, or clerical officers working in education or agricultural offices. These are people who are trying to rear families. I welcome the party opposite to the real world of politics, where it has a budget and is required to make ends meet, whether at national level or in the Northern Ireland Executive.

By agreement, the DUP Minister for Finance is being supported by Sinn Féin in getting rid of 20,000 public servants.

One of the extremely important things in junior certificate reform is the move away from rote learning. I asked the Minister's predecessor and am asking her now to look at the same thing. Rote learning has quite rightly been moved away from at primary level. As a primary teacher, I had to carry out assessments of the children that attended in my class for things like learning support and resource hours. There was a trust between me and the parents, me and the school authorities and me and the Department that when I carried out those assessments in the primary classroom, I was doing so in the best interests of the child. When I calculated a child's STen score, it was to identify whether he or she needed learning support and resource hours. There must be an element of trust at junior certificate level about whatever assessment teachers are being prepared to carry out.

The BT Young Scientists exhibition two weeks ago was the best example if anyone ever needed it of the need for our society to move away from rote learning. As someone who studied chemistry in college, I can see that these kids at 13 and 14 years of age are working outside the box; totally outside the curriculum or anything presented in a book they will be expected to vomit onto a page in June. They are learning that from the guidance they get from their teachers, parents and the school environment. That is the kind of learning experience I would love to see in our primary schools and, following on, in our secondary schools. Whatever reform ultimately comes around - and I have no doubt that there will be an agreement - the Minister cannot allow the junior certificate to hang in limbo while the leaving certificate continues to be an exam based entirely on rote learning. Every child, adolescent and adult can have a bad day. By God, I have had a lot of them when it comes to exams. One can go into an exam hall having spent two years cramming and breaking one's you-know-what to get the points to advance oneself, have a bad day and find that it is all over. That system is in dire need of change.

If the Minister is going to start with the junior certificate and proceed by agreement with the unions, she should not let matters rest there. I have every confidence in the Minister arriving at an agreement with them. She should not let a child move from primary school where rote learning is frowned on to the junior certificate where it is frowned on and then to the leaving certificate where everything is dependent on it. I urge the Minister while she has a reform agenda not to leave it hanging at the 15 year old. She should continue it through by agreement and negotiation with the unions.

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