Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The reform of the junior certificate is a huge investment in our young people and it is designed to ensure a much more balanced assessment of the way their learning is done and the way it is measured. Under the new approach, there will be a certificate of achievement, which will measure the projects they have been involved in across a range of subjects, thereby valuing intelligence of different sorts and not just the memory retention that is tested in written examinations. There will also be a classroom-based assessment which each student will write up and which will be examined independently by the State Examinations Commission, SEC. It will account for 10% of the overall mark while the conventional examination will account for the remaining 90%. The value of that approach is that it will allow teachers and learners to engage on subjects in a different way. I recently visited a school in Adamstown, County Dublin, and saw the value of it in teaching science and the way it transformed it. Students are doing projects and managing the understanding of science, not trying to remember what they learned three years ago and writing it down in a three-hour examination. This is something worthwhile.

Sadly, the ASTI has decided that it will not allow the classroom-based assessment to be completed, a decision I deeply regret. This examination process has been set by the SEC and the integrity of the process involves three elements. It is unheard of for a trade union to decide not to allow children to sit part of an assessment pathway provided for them.

Everyone in this House agrees that this pathway is the right direction, although perhaps not everyone else does. We have asked the ASTI to allow its teachers to derogate from the instruction that has been given, so that the English classroom-based assessment can be carried out and the young people sitting their junior certificate have access to that part of the examination. We need to be progressive about the way we teach and this is the right approach. We have invested in 550 additional teachers in this budget to support the roll-out of the junior certificate. Supporting teaching and learning in a new way, to progressively change the environment in which young people learn, is a very important element of the junior certificate. The Deputy stands up for the importance of education as a means to transform our society and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, whom she rightly referenced, recognises that if we want a fair and successful society, we have to value every element of our talent pool, not just the cohort who remember what they learned three years ago and can produce it in an exam. I hope the ASTI will allow pupils to complete the assessment system provided for by the State Examinations Commission.

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