Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In the course of the conversations over the past few days about NPHET, advice, a question mark - although not a major one - was placed beside the potential return to school in September. Nobody expects that to be an eventuality but it has still been brought into the conversation. Would it not be a cleaner or better for the Minister to decide now to roll out leaving certificate 2022 exactly as the leaving certificate for 2021 has been rolled out, with a choice for students? Fifth year students have lost quite a number of months of in-school tuition in this calendar year. Would it not make more sense for the Minister to make the decision now that students going into sixth year next year would have the exact same experience as those who did the leaving certificate last month? We are not yet out of the pandemic and we cannot make any predictions about what will happen with variants.

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