Joe O'Toole (Independent)

He could find out what was done by walking into his local national school where he can look at the difference in terms of the promoted posts for teachers and teaching, what they had to do before benchmarking and what they have had to do since in terms of middle management. In fact, just ask the outgoing Minister who feels very strongly about this because he is arguing with Government internally and privately that the ban on promoted posts is causing an enormous problem. The reason is that is where an enormous element of the productivity bought by benchmarking exists and this will now be lost to the Government.

When the Senator returns to his office he should ask somebody to open the Department of Education and Science website and look at the reports on whole-school inspections on any school in the country to see when the last inspection was carried out and the report published. That was another issue of benchmarking. I could go through a whole list of them and every one of them was signed off by a committee established by the Senator's Government.