Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Other than Order of Business, this is my first opportunity since being re-elected to speak, so I am delighted to speak on education and that the Minister of Education is here to listen. I do not want to repeat many valid points made by other contributors. There is very little, if anything, I disagree with from any of the contributors.

It is important we acknowledge how far we have come. I am in my 18th year on school boards of management and my 12th year as a chair of a board of management. A huge amount of work has been done. This time last year, this Minister was not in the Cabinet. This Government had not been formed. She inherited what was there before and has taken it and had to deal with the system of the leaving cert calculated grades, as it was called at the time. It has worked out much better than people thought it would, though there were certainly anomalies and little blips along the way. Credit has to be given to the Department of Education, particularly to the Minister and her team, and to everyone in the education sector, including the school community, teachers, principals, patrons, boards and particularly students and parents. They have had so much uncertainty and have not been sure what would happen and how they would do it.

I regard the system we have inherited now of accredited grades as being like an insurance policy. That is the baseline one can have, but it is reassuring to see all these people coming in saying they want to do the leaving cert. They want to sit an exam, show off how much they have learned and be assessed independently, as was done before. The easy option would be not to sit the exam and take whatever is given. However, 80%-plus of people are signing up to do the exams and show off all they have learned in difficult circumstances. It is only recently that schools came back fully. Learning remotely is difficult in any household. Learning remotely in a house that might have one digital device for three or four students trying to study and look at classes on a shared phone, and which might not have great broadband, is very difficult.

We must be cognisant of all that and of people's mental health. People are returning and there is anecdotal, if not more, evidence that, after people were cooped up in their houses for so long, there is a level of aggression and tension in secondary and perhaps even in primary schools because people have not forgotten how to socialise but have lost the skillset involved in mixing with people all the time.

I support the idea that historical data should not be used to disadvantage anybody but there was an example in my area in St. Kilian's German school, the Deutsche schule in Clonskeagh. They felt that typically more than half their year would get an A in German. Many are native speakers; many are German. The algorithms seemed to be saying it was not possible, that half of the class could not have an A and that the top 20% could get an A but no more than that. I do not say a disadvantaged school should have the historical record used against its pupils, but there may be a need to look at the system. If a school has a brilliant Latin teacher, only seven or eight do Latin and, typically, four or five of them have always got an A, the system should not say that only two out of eight can get an A because that is the max the system allows. There was an element of that in the system last year. The system should be able to go back and look and say a certain school always did well in accountancy, chemistry, physics or whatever subject it happens to be and maybe that explains why the school outperforms the national average in a significant way.This issue caused a great deal of frustration among people. They felt that because they happened to be in a class of many high achievers and there were a few who are even better than them, they were effectively downgraded whereas if they had been in a different school and cohort of people, they would probably have got an A. I am not sure whether this issue has been addressed totally, but I welcome the Bill. I also welcome the commitment of the Department and, in particular, the Minister to allow the accredited grades system. It is effectively an insurance policy that gives people a safety net, yet they still want to take their chance, prove themselves on the day, show how much they know and excel. I thank the Minister for introducing this Bill.