Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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204. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if her Department will facilitate traditional Chinese leaving certificate papers in the future; if it will ensure that the correcting system can accept an answer written in traditional Chinese; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38362/21]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I have already advised the Deputy on the current position regarding the Leaving Certificate Mandarin Chinese specification which was designed as an ab initio course, in the sense that the targeted learners are Irish or international students with no previous knowledge of the language. While heritage speakers are certainly allowed to study the course and sit the exam, the specification is not designed for them. As a result of this design intent, traditional characters are not covered by the specification and, in line with this, candidates must respond to the questions on the examination paper using the simplified characters. The inclusion of traditional characters is not suitable for a specification pitched at ab initio level. Introduced as a Leaving Certificate subject in the 2020/21 school year, teaching and learning of Mandarin Chinese is at a very early stage and needs time to embed. As such, I have no plans at this time to revise or develop a new specification for Chinese or to change the correcting system.

The Deputy may wish to note that the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) recently submitted the Senior Cycle Review: Advisory Report to my Department and I for consideration. The Advisory Report, which will be published in the coming months, looks at priority areas, longer-term goals and a proposed timeline on the pace and scale of developments in senior cycle. It sets out a shared vision articulated as the basis, which will guide further work on specific areas for developments, such as, senior cycle programmes and pathways, curriculum specifications and assessment.