Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Standardisation applies to the class cohort when you are trying to fill in a gap to achieve a baseline. It is not that the lack of individual results for that student, if it can be filled in, affects that individual student, but the Minister knows that.

The point I am making on grade inflation is that until today the Government was presenting grade inflation as a reason not to do it, whereas the Minister has now built in a form of grade inflation. Maybe that is a mitigation that is needed with the model she has chosen but that was not an argument that was being advanced by anyone about this cohort except the Opposition and students.

Additional choice in the papers could have been accommodated with the hybrid model. I see no reason you could not have the written exam with additional choices in the paper. The problem is that teachers do not teach the course in the same way and schools did not experience Covid in the same way. All schools had to close but the impact of those closures was affected by factors such as access to devices. Some schools would have had different absences of teachers and students. State examinations cannot tailor the choices of individual students to take into account their different circumstances.

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