Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for being in the Chamber this afternoon. I apologise in advance that I will have leave after my contribution, but I will check the record to learn her response.

Covid-19 has impacted on all important services. We have seen the health and wealth of the nation affected. Education and learning were forced to move from schools to homes. One million young people were homeschooled in April, and many without the necessary supports or resources to do so. The leaving certificate of 2020 has been the main talking point. We took too long to decide to cancel the exams. We did not consider the needs of all students, especially those from poorer communities. We did not consider the mental health impact that sitting at home for three months would have on students. Then there was the big mess over the coding system used for calculating grades.

Let us be frank. The Government has made mistakes. While we should face up to them, and I am not here to criticise unfairly the efforts of any people in this room, I do want to ask the Minister and the Irish education system how we want to remember this period. Do we want to look back on the leaving certificate of 2020 as the mess that it was, brush it under the carpet and return to the old way of doing the exam or do we want to be brave and use this process to learn and grow and improve the leaving certificate and how we choose to assess our students in the future? I want 2020 to be viewed as a time when we took the challenges that Covid-19 placed on us a nation and used them to transform the leaving certificate programme. We have an opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive and to use this experience to explore alternative ways to assess students. We have the chance to look at how the leaving certificate aligns with what is required for a modern society, and how we can change the system to ensure that we prepare students for the world ahead.

When Covid-19 hit, many multinationals such as Google and Microsoft moved their work life online. They were able to continue growing and developing their businesses because they were skilled in ways that our students and teachers are not. They all had access to technology and Wi-Fi; our students and staff did not. They know how to use technology creatively; we do not. They know how to meet each other, deliver learning and build products collaboratively using technology, and we do not. When we lost access to the outdated talk and chalk method used in our classrooms, we lost the capability to teach students and prepare them for a memory test, which is the leaving certificate.

Covid-19 has given us a chance to rethink education, provide our young people with the competencies required to make the most of their lives in a world of ubiquitous change, and give them the competencies to contribute at their full capacity for the betterment of wider society. We have resisted change in the education system for far too long. Teachers opposed the reform of the junior certificate. The idea of using project-based learning and continual assessment was negated. Teachers did not know or trust the process. Covid-19 has moved us beyond this argument. We now know that teachers can and will do this, and may even want to. We also know that despite the mess of the coding system, students and staff are relatively happy with how teachers assess their own students, so why can we not establish this as our new mode of assessment? Can we be brave and say that we made mistakes, but let us get the process right for next year?

We have had report after report of how unfair the leaving certificate is. It negatively affects students' mental health. It is influenced by class and wealth and does not prepare students for the 21st century jobs market. If we are brave, develop this new way of assessing, and introduce a skills-focused approach, which was the basis of the junior certificate reform, we could move to a fairer system which assesses as we go, trusts our educators, prepares our students for living outside of the blackboard, and removes the meritocracy of the leaving certificate.

Reform does not imply criticism. Great work has been done by our teachers in this pandemic and prior to this. Reform means to grow, adapt and change. Let us not be reactive to this pandemic anymore. Let us use it to make sure that our education system is the best it can be and everyone has a fair chance to succeed. We are in the lucky position where we can now start preparing teachers and students for the leaving certificate examination 2021, where we can begin changing the system and asking students to complete project work for the coming exams rather than waiting to see what Covid brings in the coming months. Students for examination in 2021 have had the same challenges as the students for examination in 2020. They missed months of schools and had stress and strains. They should be told earlier that things are going to be different for them and not to worry. If we plan now for the coming year and embrace the challenges and changes of Covid-19, we may actually have the education system that celebrates skills over memory and allows everyone to shine. Let us not leave the leaving certificate of 2020 to be remembered as the year we made a mistake in a few lines of a code. Let us make it the year that we embrace change to the leaving certificate.

I echo the comments of Senator Warfield on reform in sex education and sexuality teaching in schools.