Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator McGreehan for raising this issue. I welcome Niamh to the Chamber and it is great to see my old pal Ciarán accompanying her. This is a very timely Commencement matter. I am meeting Vision Ireland tomorrow afternoon to discuss this and many other issues relating specifically to my work with the Department of Finance on access to financial services for those with visual impairments. This follows on from a lot of work we have done with Senator Martin Conway on access to apprenticeships, particularly in the retail sphere. We have been very lucky to have some progress in this area over the past couple of months.

I will deal specifically with the status quo and a few changes that have been put in place for the junior and leaving certificate examinations. Then I will address some of the Senator's suggestions in a bit more detail.

The State Examinations Commission, SEC, has statutory responsibility for the operation of the State examinations. This includes providing access to the examinations for candidates with a complex variety of special educational needs under its scheme of reasonable accommodations, known as the RACE scheme. In 2023 the SEC piloted the provision of read-only digital versions of examination papers to leaving certificate candidates who are vision impaired and under the care of the visiting teacher service, VTS. This was in the context of an ongoing review and improvement of the RACE scheme. Read-only digital PDF versions of the standard examination papers were provided for the purposes of facilitating zooming and panning, along with the potential for users with appropriate accessibility software to adjust the colour or tone of the background and/or the text. A total of 14 candidates participated in these pilot arrangements.

Following a Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, case about inclusion of junior cycle candidates in the pilot, and having given detailed consideration to the issue, the SEC decided to extend the scope of the pilot to the junior cycle in 2024. The scope was also extended to include modified as well as standard versions of examination papers. A total of 26 leaving certificate and junior certificate candidates are included in the pilot arrangements this year.

On the first morning of the examinations, Wednesday, 5 June, there was a technical, security-related issue in accessing the digital examination paper through the SEC’s secure portal. I can advise that ten schools reported this issue to the SEC on behalf of ten candidates. The issue was resolved by 11.15 a.m. that morning. The SEC had also provided the examination papers for these candidates in traditional enlarged-hard-copy format. This enabled the ten affected candidates to take their examinations using the hard copy of the paper. Any time lost was restored at the end of the examination session.

The SEC has asked each school in the pilot to appoint a designated liaison person. The SEC has engaged with them to review what happened in their school and to apologise to the affected candidates. Arrangements will made to ensure that there is no disadvantage to these candidates. A comprehensive review of the pilot was planned, which will now include this specific issue.

An extensive range of examination supports is already available to support candidates with vision impairments but the Senator has made the case quite clearly that these are insufficient. It is not just about the range of additional services but it is the whole range of supports that apply to the entire education process, not just to the couple of hours of the examination. There is an opportunity here. There will be a review of the updates that were made for this year's junior certificate and leaving certificate regarding the issues I have laid out.As part of that, this is the moment where we address what is clearly an awful shortfall for those who are visually impaired and have additional needs and are sitting second level examinations and accessing education. I say this from a personal point of view; my brother is head of resources in a secondary school in Wicklow and is sitting on hand with students as we speak for examinations at leaving and junior certificate level. They are, of course, the history students the Senator mentioned because that is his main subject focus.

Let us use this moment as an opportunity. The Senator raised a number of key issues. I am over time and will come back to them. Let us take them directly to the Minister, Deputy Foley, bring the involved families in and use Vision Ireland and this as an opportunity to make the progress the Senator so eloquently laid out.