Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy expanded on a couple of major points, particularly the leaving certificate. He may have entered into dealing with where we need to go with the leaving certificate in the future in terms of the leaving certificate review. I have no doubt he will add to that debate when it arises. There is no doubt that future leaving certificates will have to be different from those in the past because this debate is about the class of 2021 as well as the class of 2020. Those students are losing out on class time with their teachers this year and dealing with uncertainty around the starting time for the new school year in September and how it will impact on them. The current situation has opened up the conversation on alternatives to a two-year leaving certificate course where everything goes down to the wire, such as through more continuous assessment. Unfortunately, we are not at that juncture. Given the current challenges for the leaving certificate, we do not have a standardised system that would lend itself to considering different ways of progressing it. However, we have a system that allows for objectivity, transparency and fairness by virtue of the papers being corrected anonymously. That fairness is central to the leaving certificate. The Deputy raised several issues and I take his point. I have been contacted by many individual students who highlighted the stress they are under and the difficulties they are experiencing. There is a big push from young people for predicted grades, but there are inherent challenges in ensuring that fairness would remain at the heart of the leaving certificate under such a system. For example, what recourse would be available to a student who receives a predicted grade and is left a few points short of achieving a place on a college course?

That brings me to the third element of the Deputy's questions. I will return to the issue of the digital divide. There may be extra places available on third level courses as a result of having fewer international students. As to whether we are looking at providing more access programme places, we are looking at everything. We are considering every scenario, which is why we set up the higher education group within the Department to look at the transition to third level.

On the digital divide, one of the challenges in politics is that the announcements one makes do not always cover everything. As the Deputy correctly pointed out, the €10 million allocation was originally intended for the back-end of the year and was to go to schools of excellence.

I made the decision, therefore, to look at that money, and rather than taking it all from the primary schools, we left €3 million for them. That €7 million is to go specifically to targeted intervention. I know the Deputy's board of management and principal will know exactly where the gaps potentially are and who needs the devices. Many of our students have smartphones and so they have that capacity, but as another Deputy mentioned as well, there is a competition going on in households for usage of devices, with parents working from home as well. There is extra funding for DEIS schools as well. We are also looking at bulk buying and we are looking at companies to see how we can get extra devices such as laptops at a more reasonable price.

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