Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Cathal Crowe. This time last year, Deputy Crowe and I would have been welcoming a class into school. This is the first September in 15 years that I have not done so. In the past week, I visited a number of schools in my constituency, from the larger schools such as my own school, Glór na Mara in Tramore, to some of the smaller country schools such as Newtown Junior School, Ballydurn. I visited one particular classroom in this school that I want to speak about. There will be countless examples of it throughout the country. It speaks to some of the work and level of responsibility that the boards of management and principals are taking on at this time. The classroom in question is a typical country school classroom, which is small and accommodates a fourth-fifth year split class comprised of 34 children, one of whom has special needs. The principal and the board of management of the school are worried that they will not able to provide for social distancing in the way that they would ideally like to be able to do. They are worried about the responsibility that they bear and whether they are making a public health decision in allowing the children to sit in that classroom. They want the support of the Department in making that decision. It is an awesome burden of responsibility. At the best of times, being a principal or serving on a board of management in a primary school entails a great deal of responsibility. These people are looking for backup from the Department such that can feel supported in the decisions they make.

I want to raise a second issue, which I raised yesterday at the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response, namely, grade inflation, but in regard to the 20,000 students who will be bringing 2019 or earlier year results into the CAO system this year. I will give a specific example. I know of a constituent who took 2019 to improve on her HPAT results and knows that her current aggregated score would be sufficient to secure her a place on the course she has being trying to get into for the past three years but she is worried that she will miss that boat because of grade inflation this year. Students in this situation need to be looked after when the next round of CAO courses are announced.

On a different but related issue, namely, leaving certificate 2021 and some of the issues likely to arise, I have reviewed a document from the Department of Education and Skills outlining assessment arrangements for junior cycle and leaving certificate examinations for 2021. In that document, there is an acknowledgement that we have set out adjusted assessment arrangements for the coming year examination cycle and it states that no centrally prescribed adjustment to the curriculum and course of study would be effective. We have to accept that point. It also says that changes can be reviewed as reflected, recognising a loss of learning over time and that provision will be made for additional examination choices. I have a nagging concern in terms of, in particular, a mathematics course, where if there is a wider range of choices on the examination paper, there may be units of work which are not completed. It is important that the Department of Education and Skills and the Department for further and higher education, research, innovation and science co-ordinate and get ahead of this problem. For example, if a student is going into a physics or an engineering course and he or she has not taken time to study functions in the leaving certificate, that needs to be tracked such that there will be no lacuna in that learning when it comes to third level.

I will cede the remainder of my time to Deputy Crowe.

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