Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. I echo some of what Senator O'Loughlin said in terms of welcoming the clarity that this Bill brings to the learnings from last year. We can all recall the various issues that arose last year at a very difficult time for people.Many people will have been somewhat discombobulated as they grew to learn more about the element of sausage making in the processing of leaving certificate results and the standardisation. I think few people would claim to understand it but it was possibly quite unnerving for many people. What we are trying to achieve here is for the sausage making to be done as fairly as possible. I am glad that provision is being made for people outside the normal system such as those who are home schooling and the experiences and lessons of last year are being learned.

I welcome the fact that the lead into the leaving certificate examinations this year involves less of the sort of frenzy and chaos that we saw last year. It is still a very trying and anxious time for all involved, as the Minister well knows, perhaps better than anybody, but it is a positive that at least students have some decent knowledge of what to expect and can plan accordingly. I note that the use of the phrase "the look and feel of the leaving certificate" is being restored by the fact that leaving certificate examinations will take place in the normal way at the normal time.

While it is good to see schools fully back and State examinations proceeding with some kind of normality and proper structure, we can never underestimate the damage that has been done to the education system and the well-being of so many young people over the past year. Every week that schools remained closed meant that additional stress and strain was placed on students by the uncertainty over State examinations, so it is good that the psychological barriers of the school reopening and the examination arrangements have been crossed to a large extent.

I spoke in the House last September about the lessons we should learn from the Covid experience and its impact on education. For the past 20 years, the welfare and well-being of young people often seemed to be sacrificed at the altar of the State examinations and access to college. Covid brought this into very sharp focus. The leaving certificate and the progression to third level are increasingly seen as “box-ticking” exercises both by young people and by the system - hurdles to be crossed and chores to be got through on the road to third level or the employment market. A teacher observed to me that our system is increasingly constructed with employers and multinationals in mind; often seeming to treat our young people as economic units. I ask whether enough consideration is given by policymakers about how to shape or help form young people so they can become fully rounded human beings.

Policy in this area of examinations and examination standards seems to be heavily driven by Department of Education officialdom. There seems to be an obsession with comparing our system to systems in places like Finland and Queensland, which are often held out as benchmarks. There is also a quasi-religious devotion to the Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA, league tables compiled by the OECD.

Instead of constantly trying to benchmark our system against models in other countries, while always having due regard to what other countries are doing, can we not build an education system that suits our society, our needs and our young people? I read somewhere that the man who designed the examination system in Finland pleaded with other countries not to try to copy its system because in his words, every country is different and yet our educational establishment still engages in that exercise of imitation. It must be said that State policy follows the same path across successive Governments. I am not laying this at the Minister's door but in the past, there has been a tendency for successive Ministers to be co-opted by civil servants and have their policy agenda handed to them. With due regard to the good intentions of everybody involved, that is a temptation or a potential tendency within the system. It involves depersonalising the issue and finding the appropriate balance between the role of the Minister, who must follow to some extent but also lead, and the role of policy advisers and civil servants. I put that out there as a principle to remain with.

One recent example involved a research paper called "Advancing School Autonomy in the Irish School System", which was originally written almost ten years ago. The paper proposed a series of radical changes to how schools operate that would have brought us closer to a British model of more locally independent schools. A consultation with schools in 2015 showed that the proposals went down like a lead balloon and were a non-runner and yet they reappeared in the 2016 Fine Gael manifesto, which proposed to implement those proposals in a Bill.I wonder whether that was a prime example of mooted Government policy not being set by elected politicians but being set elsewhere. Was this a case of a doomed and failed policy proposal being recycled, copied and pasted into the manifesto of a Government party? If it is, it is not the way I would like to see our education system being led and run. We need distinctive Irish policies to suit our needs as a country, not policies imported from abroad.

I have two issues to raise with regard to the Bill. I raise them tentatively because I am conscious of the effort and expertise that is going into solving the problems we have had. I pay tribute to the Minister for her hard work and to the people working with her in the Civil Service, the Department and so on in seeking the best outcomes.

Under the Bill, students will have a chance to opt between sitting the exam and the calculated grades, and taking the best of the two. Some people have expressed concerns to me that this might lead to attempts to game the system to a certain extent. For example, a student might opt for a calculated grade in Irish, which is generally seen as a difficult subject, but might choose to sit a written examination in, for example, geography, because it is seen as a subject where a good result is achievable in a written exam. We would say fair play to the student who seeks to work the system to his or her best advantage. After the year students have had, we certainly could not blame them. Are there issues there for the integrity of our education system and the consistency of grades? While on the surface it seems welcome, to give people the best of both, could it lead to a gaming of the system where people make strategic decisions about which examinations they sit the paper for and which they take the calculated grade for? It looks reassuring but is there a risk? Many people will ask if the calculated grade is always likely to be better than the written examination. Is a hedging of bets envisaged by this approach that might not ultimately be to the good of the system and with the ultimate good of the people served by the system in mind. I ask those questions tentatively, but if the Minister has anything to say about the consideration given to those concerns, I would be interested to hear it.

I have heard anecdotal evidence, as I am sure have other Senators, that the novelty of the calculated grades has meant that individual schools and teachers have substantially ramped up the amount of in-class testing they do. The aim is probably to ensure they have sufficient grounds on which to assess calculated grades and a basis on which to stand over them if they are challenged. I have heard that in some cases, assessments are carried out almost daily. I ask the Minister for her opinion on that. I meant to look up the difference between the words "continual" and "continuous". I would be worried if continuous assessment meant that students were being continually assessed. We all know the difference between intermittent rain and continual rain. I would be concerned about that too. I did not think anybody ever intended that the grades would be taken so literally.