Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

A lecturer in UCD told me that much of the modern examination system originated with efforts to populate the civil service in British-controlled colonial China. I do not know if it is true, but it is a structure that is about enforcing certain norms and notions of hierarchy. That is still true of the leaving certificate. There are some dinosaurs in the North or in Britain who might hark back to the days of the 11 plus, when people's access to secondary education was streamed through exams. We now think that is horrible. The time has come for us to have the same attitude towards accessing third-level education. I do not see how the leaving certificate is anything other than a gatekeeping exercise, a streaming exercise and an unnecessary stress that does nothing to encourage education and has long outlived its usefulness.

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