Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome my colleague from County Cork, Deputy Burke, and thank him for taking this Commencement matter on behalf of the Minister for Education. Will the Minister for Education make a statement on the ongoing review regarding reasonable accommodations being available to leaving certificate and junior certificate examination students? This has been a significant issue for many people and I have been chasing it for a long time. There is a significant petition of 30,000 people from the Dyslexia Association of Ireland, which is looking for a review of accommodations available to people doing the leaving certificate and junior certificate examinations. These are very basic accommodations available in other countries and at third level but for some reason, the State Examinations Commission has not implemented them in the leaving certificate or junior certificate examinations. One I always speak about is additional time. I cannot understand why additional time is not given to dyslexic kids. It happens in every other jurisdiction, as far as I can see, in Europe. It happens at third level and in universities, where students get additional time.For some reason we are stuck in a scenario where the State Examinations Commission does not allow for dyslexic children who are doing the junior and leaving certificate examinations. We brought this matter to the petitions committee last May and we got an absolutely frightening response from the State Examinations Commission that it would look at this and that the review would take two to three years. What does that mean? There are kids in primary school who would probably go through the leaving certificate process and this will not be implemented. It just does not work.

We will also need to start looking at other things regarding this review such as the bizarre situation where the Department of Education will give assistive technology grants to children and they may get these in perhaps first or second year but the State Examinations Commission will not approve that technology to be used until some time during their third year. Can one imagine this now? We are giving a dyslexic child a computer to help him or her to go through their school years and the State Examinations Commission will not give them the approval until some time in third year. They then sit in limbo for two years with this issue. It is beyond belief.

We have issues here which need to be dealt with in a timeline that is appropriate. The timeline we are receiving from the State Examinations Commission is two to three years for the review to happen. For me, this review needs to happen in two to three months. We have 13,000 children who have gone through the leaving certificate process in the past few days who are dyslexic and they need those accommodations to be brought forward and to be made available to them such as they would receive when they go to third level education or receive in other European countries. We are behind the times when it comes to this issue and there is no urgency on the part of the State Examinations Commission to prioritise it. It must be prioritised and moved forward and the children who are going through this leaving certificate cycle are struggling because of the lack of time they are being given for the exams. I do not understand how the State Examinations Commission is taking a two or three-year process to come back with what it proposes to do.

I will finish on the following point. In a report published in 2008, it was then recommended that additional time should be granted and that this be brought forward but the commission has not even brought that recommendation forward itself. We do not need any more reviews. We need this to happen and we need the State Examinations Commission to look at this issue in a timely manner. To do this in two or three years is not a timely manner.