Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is a certain contradiction in that. If the model fails the validation and does not produce the result we expect from a particular demographic or gender, there will have to be adjustments. Grades will either have to go down or go up. That has real implications for students. It really is not good enough.

The Minister has not answered my primary question. There is a model. It deserves to be subject to public scrutiny. Why will the Minister not publish the statistical model? It is complex and technical, but there are many people in the public sphere who could take a view on it and inform the public discourse on whether it is fair. We can all think of examples of exceptional students within classes with weak results, or exceptional classes that might have bucked the trend. They were depending on their ability to perform in exams. That is gone now. How can they have any confidence that this model can guarantee fairness? I recently came across a class where there had never been a grade higher than a C in agricultural science. There were five A1 grades in the class's leaving certificate results. There is no junior certificate in agricultural science. How could junior certificate results have told us that class would perform so well? We must have confidence. Will the Minister publish the model so we can all scrutinise it?

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