I have just left the meeting of the Joint Committee on Education and Skills where we had quite the discussion on an issue relevant to the Minister and to many junior cycle students and their parents as we near the end of the first term of the school year, which is the worry and uncertainty about the distinct possibility that because of the Government's ongoing dispute with the ASTI, thousands of students will automatically lose marks in their English examination next summer. Two weeks ago before the same committee, the Minister said he could not guarantee that students taught by ASTI teachers would not lose out on 10% of their English grade if the dispute affects their ability to participate in classroom-based assessments. As it stands, we have no confirmation from him that every junior certificate student will be assessed equally and awarded an equal grade for equal quality of work, regardless of the union to which their English teacher belongs, and this is simply not good enough.

Alternative models are in operation, which could help solve this problem and provide a guarantee to students that they will not be adversely affected. For example, students who do not participate in oral examinations in junior cycle languages have their written examinations marked out of 100. This means students who do not take an oral component in a language examination do not automatically lose marks. This, or another model, may not be ideal but I ask the Minister to accept the urgent need to have a contingency plan in place. Such a plan requires a great deal of preparation. Will the Minister outline the steps he is taking to make sure these students do not suffer because of a dispute that does not involve them?

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform referred in his budget contribution to fairness and said we are on a pathway to a just and fair society. He said fairness is about investment in education and education is the bedrock of our society. He spoke about access to education and how it has transformed our society and he is right. As John F. Kennedy said, education should be the greatest equaliser of them all. However, for all the Minister's talk of fairness, it is essential that we realise that the most important investment is in our children and in our students and that fairness means we must, first and foremost, make sure they are all treated equally.

The reform of the junior certificate is a huge investment in our young people and it is designed to ensure a much more balanced assessment of the way their learning is done and the way it is measured. Under the new approach, there will be a certificate of achievement, which will measure the projects they have been involved in across a range of subjects, thereby valuing intelligence of different sorts and not just the memory retention that is tested in written examinations. There will also be a classroom-based assessment which each student will write up and which will be examined independently by the State Examinations Commission, SEC. It will account for 10% of the overall mark while the conventional examination will account for the remaining 90%. The value of that approach is that it will allow teachers and learners to engage on subjects in a different way. I recently visited a school in Adamstown, County Dublin, and saw the value of it in teaching science and the way it transformed it. Students are doing projects and managing the understanding of science, not trying to remember what they learned three years ago and writing it down in a three-hour examination. This is something worthwhile.

Sadly, the ASTI has decided that it will not allow the classroom-based assessment to be completed, a decision I deeply regret. This examination process has been set by the SEC and the integrity of the process involves three elements. It is unheard of for a trade union to decide not to allow children to sit part of an assessment pathway provided for them.

Everyone in this House agrees that this pathway is the right direction, although perhaps not everyone else does. We have asked the ASTI to allow its teachers to derogate from the instruction that has been given, so that the English classroom-based assessment can be carried out and the young people sitting their junior certificate have access to that part of the examination. We need to be progressive about the way we teach and this is the right approach. We have invested in 550 additional teachers in this budget to support the roll-out of the junior certificate. Supporting teaching and learning in a new way, to progressively change the environment in which young people learn, is a very important element of the junior certificate. The Deputy stands up for the importance of education as a means to transform our society and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, whom she rightly referenced, recognises that if we want a fair and successful society, we have to value every element of our talent pool, not just the cohort who remember what they learned three years ago and can produce it in an exam. I hope the ASTI will allow pupils to complete the assessment system provided for by the State Examinations Commission.

In putting the question to the Minister, I was not asking him to defend the reform but to help the students and guarantee that they will not lose out on 10% of their marks in English. I hope the Minister can lead, prioritise, instil and inject a real sense of pressing urgency into the ongoing negotiations and that all involved will redouble their efforts to resolve the dispute but the possibility of negotiations failing necessitates having a plan B. The Government has a duty to the students and to the welfare of our young people to show foresight and see the consequences that might flow from its actions. It cannot flail from crisis to crisis without trying to anticipate the events it is putting in motion. The bottom line is that there is an ongoing dispute with the ASTI, which means junior certificate students are going to suffer. The Minister must find a way to level the playing field for these children. Next June, third year students will face their first State examination and no students should have to face that exam, to walk into the examination hall, knowing that before they put pen to paper, they are 10% down on their results through no fault of their own. The Minister for Education should not let that happen.

I regret that Deputy Martin is seeking to play political football with something that is really important. It is unheard of to advocate, in this House, that the State examination system, under which we provide an assessment of every child in the country, should be undermined because one trade union has decided not to co-operate in teaching it over the past number of years.

Deputy Martin did not say that

I am advocating for children.

That is a very irresponsible approach. Deputy Martin should be asking the ASTI to allow the derogation so that children who have studied the curriculum can sit the full examination as intended.

The Minister needs a plan B.

We have to defend the integrity of the examination system. We cannot have an individual union deciding that it will undermine something that has been negotiated with all the trade unions over years and agreed by all except one, in a vote in which there was only a 38% turnout. Now the children may not get the opportunity to sit that part of the exam.

Say that to the students, Minister.

Deputy Martin should not be playing political football with this as it is something that is important to our children. The ASTI should allow the pupils to sit the exam as intended.