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

I thank Deputy Ó Laoghaire and Sinn Féin for introducing this motion on the leaving certificate. People Before Profit is happy to support it.

The very least we can insist upon in the particular situation of Covid-19 is that the voices of leaving certificate school students, as clearly expressed by them and their representative organisations, should be heard. They want a choice with a hybrid exam. They have been through enough and they need that clarity soon. They want the Minister to listen to their voice. We are happy to support that. As the Minister is aware, we wish to go further. We brought a motion to that effect to the Dáil last March, but the Government opposed it. I am going to repeat the argument a year on, as it is even more relevant now. We have tabled a short amendment which does not delete anything from the Sinn Féin motion but adds that we should have open access to higher and further education and apprenticeships, and that we should scrap the leaving certificate. We should get rid of it because it is a way of limiting access to higher and further education and it is irrational and unfair to do that. It forces people into a rat race for points which is extremely detrimental to the well-being of our young people. It is completely pointless. It is damaging and reinforces social inequality, is long past its sell-by date and should go. We are very clear about this.

School students who have led the way, by the way, on climate - we should bear that in mind - say that they want system change, not climate change but system change. System change is what we need in education and we need it now, not some time in the future with little bits here and there of tinkering around with the existing failed and unfair system. The unfairness of this has been magnified in the context of Covid-19 but it was always an unfair system.

Deputy Gannon has already referred to something that was in our motion last March. It is shocking that the Government can maintain that the leaving certificate is fair. It is ridiculous to say that unless one is not looking at the context of the leaving certificate. Some 99% of people from Ranelagh - I have nothing against the people of Ranelagh - go to university but 15% or 16% of people from working-class areas do so. Is that fair? It is grossly unfair and something has to be done about it. If one does not start by recognising that there is a problem, quite frankly one is defending the indefensible. I am delighted that the ASTI has now endorsed the view that open access is needed. We should listen to it, even though I do not agree with everything the teachers' unions have said on this issue, because it is absolutely right in saying that we need open access. That is about responding to the pandemic. We have gone on and on about where there is going to be a new normal. That is the expression. We are going to learn from Covid-19 but what we are actually trying to do is to drag ourselves back to the stuff before Covid-19 and to return to the status quo. We do not need that status quowhen it comes to the leaving certificate; we need a revolution in education. We need the imagination to remember that once upon a time people thought it was fair and reasonable to limit access to second level education. We think that would be utterly preposterous now, but once upon a time that is the way it was looked at. Once upon a time significant numbers of people did not imagine that they would ever get past primary education. Now, equally, we think that is preposterous.

Why on earth would we ration and have a gatekeeping exercise for access to further and higher education? When we brought this motion forward last year, the Tánaiste said it was a nice idea but was totally impractical and asked where we would get the buildings. If one walks down Aungier Street, one will see a third level institution that has been sitting empty for the past two to three years. It is outrageous. If one goes along by the Merrion Gates, one can look at the Seamark Building in which a college could be fitted. It has been sitting empty for ten years. There are multiple buildings like that around the country. There is no problem with the physical infrastructure if we are serious about this.

The other comment I love is that everyone will want to be a doctor. This is the sort of nonsense that is wheeled out. We are defending a situation whereby in order to do the thing one would like to do, one has to be subjected to a regime of studying many things that one does not want to do, in order to get to the thing that one does want to do.

Is it even the thing the student wants to do, given it is just a hierarchy of points to get into particular courses? Surely it is a little more logical to let people do the thing they really want and are enthusiastic to do in third level. Would that not be imaginative? Imagine the type of creative potential that could be unleashed if people were given the opportunity to do the things they are really keen to do. I believe that might produce better graduates. It might contribute better to our society to unleash the creative potential of the many people whom the system at present deters or to whom it denies access to education and the things they want to do.

It is entirely practical. The gap between the number of higher education places and the number of applicants is about 25,000. That gap can be filled. There are many part-time academic staff who would love a full-time job but who are on crappy part-time contracts or are paid by the hour. We have the people who could do the teaching and, believe me, we have buildings in which we could put the students. We just need the imagination of the Government to take this leap, and now is the time to take it.

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