Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We talk about going back to a normal leaving certificate exam this year but what is normal? We can look at the current cohort of leaving certificate pupils but for the past three years there has not been any kind of normal for them. Covid-19 affected three years of their education and now they are expected to go back to "normal". What is normal for them? They have never sat a State exam and they did not get to do their junior certificate exams because of Covid-19. They have been tutored on Zoom if they were lucky enough to have broadband and had the finances to purchase a laptop. If there were two or three children in the house, they may have had to share a laptop. What was going on in their homes? Was it a good learning environment in which to study? How can anybody talk about "normal"?

We also had absentees resulting from Covid-19 in both the student and teacher cohorts. There was a grave shortage of substitute teachers. How is that normal? This cohort of students have a right to a hybrid model because there has been nothing normal about their past three academic years.

I am the father of a leaving certificate student. I have seen first-hand what this means. He and his student colleagues even go to after-school services until 9 p.m. to try to catch up. He has never sat a State exam. These students are trying day and night to catch up and different teachers do not know what they have already learned. The Government argues that this is normal but it is not normal. The normal course of action would be to give these students the option of a hybrid approach or the choice of either a predicted grade or sitting the exam. It is the right thing to do. For my child, his friends and all the other students around the country, the Minister must be responsible and make this normal for them this year.

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