Shane Curley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Crowe for raising this. I was a secondary school teacher before I came was elected to the House and the one thing I never really understood in the Irish education system in general was the obsession we have with time limits in exams. That is the kind of concept Senator Crowe is focusing on today - the time we allow students with dyslexia.

We were all fed clichés as students that the leaving certificate is an opportunity to show off what we know, not a test of what we do not know, etc., and that is nonsense. Bloom's taxonomy, probably the most recognised hierarchy of intelligences, would suggest that memory and understanding - the entire tenets of the leaving certificate - are 90-95% of what you do in your leaving certificate exams.

The leaving certificate was definitely not designed with dyslexia in mind. If you take it that memory and understanding and memorising huge reams of text to regurgitate them on paper only to forget about it for the rest of your life afterwards are basically what the leaving certificate is, and I have seen that as a teacher, then it definitely was not designed for students with dyslexia.

All that said, I welcome that there is a RACE review about to be undertaken, which means that Senator Crowe's Commencement matter today is very timely. I have been speaking to special needs co-ordinators in schools, particularly in my own school back home that I used to teach in, Presentation College Athenry. The one thing that was reinforced to me was that, if we are going to explore the concept of additional time for students with dyslexia, let it be on a school-based assessment. That is a really positive step that could be taken. When the RACE concept in general was given back to schools and a lot of the priority and power was given to schools to have assessments at school level, it really changed the game. Schools know their students best; they really do. They deal with them daily, see the needs of each student and can tailor their reasonable accommodations to each student's needs. Giving it to the school and giving a school-based assessment the priority would also avoid the whole idea of reasonable accommodations becoming the preserve of those who can afford private psychological assessments. It is really important that it would be an equal concept.

I thank the Minister of State for his time and gabhaim buíochas leis an Seanadóir Crowe.