Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairperson and Senators. Again, I appreciate the invitation and opportunity to be here. I am very appreciative of the very positive and worthwhile engagement that always comes my way from all the Senators here and I know their absolute commitment to matters of education, which are close to their hearts.

The education system, including teachers, students, parents and the sector's agencies continue to respond positively to new and evolving challenges. I am confident that progress is continuing towards returning to normality and ensuring that a student-centred approach for meeting existing and new challenges is very much on the way.

During the pandemic students, teachers and families faced uncertainty about State examinations. However, we are coming out on the other side and, as I have previously outlined, we are more and more returning to pre-Covid circumstances or standards.

I appreciate the specific questions that the Senators have raised here today. I thank Senator O'Loughlin who engages with me on an ongoing basis on matters concerning education. I am very happy to hear of her engagement, particularly with the Patrician Secondary School in Newbridge, because I do think that students are always going to be our best ambassadors for whatever programmes or initiatives are in our schools. I am really charmed to think that the Senator was impressed by the transition year students in PSS and their forthrightness, ability to lead and be at the front showcasing all that happens in transition year. I welcome that and congratulate the students on their efforts.

The Senator raised issues around young people with additional needs and emphasised the great importance that must be attached to ensuring they have appropriate transitions whether that is from junior cycle to senior cycle, which we are working on as part of senior cycle reform. Equally, I believe that we need to go beyond that in terms of having pathways towards work and other education opportunities, and we have pilot schemes for a number of those initiatives. It is very important that young people are supported in making the right and appropriate choices to meet their own needs whether it is further education or going out into the world of work. We will learn a great deal from the various pilot schemes.

I acknowledge the Senator's welcome for the new subjects, including the arts which are important as well. It is about equity, excellence, accessibility and ensuring that every young person can see themselves in the curricula that we offer. I thank her for her ongoing engagement.

The Senator specifically referenced AI. I was in Strasbourg last week for a couple of days. I found it really interesting to engage with other Ministers for education and hear their take on what I believe will be an enormous opportunity for the world of education in terms of AI. Equally, I believe that AI will pose challenges and it is important that all of us learn how to arm ourselves against those challenges but work in collaboration. I am very happy to work with colleague Ministers. It is also important that the unique experience of the Irish education system would be researched too so I am very pleased that the State Examinations Commission will undertake that body of work as it will inform where we are going forward.

In the interim it is important that we drive on with senior cycle reform. We could have made a decision to sit on our hands and pause everything because of the advent of AI. As I thought that would have done a disservice to students so we took the decision, and I announced last week, that we were accelerating senior cycle reform by 2025. Now we will have more than 120 students availing of a reformed senior cycle two years earlier and that is for the benefit of students. We are only motivated in education by one thing and that is to benefit students. We want to enhance their capabilities, opportunities to maximise their talents and ensure that the world of education serves them. By moving ahead with senior cycle reform we are very much in that space.

I welcome Senator Warfield's contribution. I am an enormous supporter of the arts and I acknowledge his ongoing commitment to the arts. He has consistently raised this issue. I am hugely supportive of the vision and he referenced the creative youth plan. It is extremely important that the arts are embedded not just within senior cycle but in the ongoing experience throughout schools.

I hear what the Senator said about all the additional asks being put on staff in schools and everything else. One of the programmes that I was very pleased to introduce is the Bringing Live Arts to Students and Teachers, BLAST, programme, which brings live or local artists into schools. It is important that students meet living artists whether they are in the world of music or dance, or potters, seamstresses or whatever. It is important that the artists are of the community so students can identify with them and skills can be shared. We must ensure that the burden is not placed on the existing staff within the school to find that talent or resource. It is a case of the talent being in the community so we need to draw on the community.

The Senator is right to mention that we have creative schools and clusters, which shows we are increasingly embedding the arts into the system and supporting the system. For example, I know that he will be very pleased with the introduction of the new subject area of drama, film and theatre studies. For too long I have felt, and I refer to my own experience, that students do not see their talents getting an opportunity to shine in the curricula. Therefore, I believe that the student who is talented in music or the world of drama is as valuable as the student who has an equal talent in physics, English, French or whatever the case might be. Subjects should be of equal merit across the system and that will happen with the introduction of the new subjects. Creative pursuits are very much on our agenda. I assure the Senator that we will continue to focus on that and I am very happy to get back to him if he wishes to raise specific issues about creativity.

I thank Senator Dolan and I am very appreciative of her ongoing engagement with me. On her views about assessed components and what they will look like, this is a matter for the State Examinations Commission and I will not pre-empt them but I think the idea is in the main and in the round as opposed to being specific. I am very confident that there will always be a place for the written exam but there must also be a place for other types of skills. For example, a student might be able to craft or create an animation. Many students may be very good at recording on paper how to run an experiment although they might not be able to conduct the experiment or the other way around. I think the student who can conduct the experience has very valuable skills and it should be the skill that he or she has gained. In that area we are looking at widening the type of additional assessment but that will be the sole responsibility of the State Examinations Commission.

The Senator referenced the importance of the student voice and there is absolutely no doubt about that. I am very proud to say that over the past three years we have made enormous strides in terms of the student voice. The students now sit around the decision-making table with all of the other partners. That has not happened before in the Department of Education. Students now sit on the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and never before in the history of the NCCA has that happened.A new wing has been constituted within my Department, under the leadership of Professor Landy who is working with students and the Department so that all of our policies and statements are student proofed and that students are at the centre of it all. We have brought new initiatives to the fore, for example the anti-bullying initiative which was a comprehensive document and at its centre was a myriad of focus group engagements with students, some of which I attended. If you want to know what is wrong with the system and how to fix it, then you should go to those who receive the system, and that is the student body. I was blown away by how articulate, invested and honest the students were. It is not before time that the Department recognised this. As a teacher, I always recognised it. When you give students opportunities to shine and to be the best, they will take the opportunities. The trick is to make sure they get the opportunity. Increasingly, we are working to ensure that the student's voice is at the centre of all that we do.

On the transition year, TY, experience and the taster programmes that we are hoping to introduce, as Senator O'Loughlin referenced, it is important for all students to have the opportunity if they wish to involve themselves in TY. It is also important that they have apprenticeship opportunities. We are working on that and the policy statement will be in place for September 2024. In regard to the engagement with the widest range of people, I assure Members that around the table there are parents, students and staff so that it is the widest representation. In terms of the specific challenges in Ballinasloe, I am very fond of Ballinasloe and I had a happy visit there; the Senator will have to leave that with me and I will revert on it. I have fond memories of my visits there. Excellence is delivered every single day. I can work with the Senator in that regard.

I like how Senator Currie positioned the issue that education should be about the journey as much as the destination. I agree 100% with that. She referenced the junior cycle forum and where we are on that. There are conflicting views around the CBAs and how many CBAs there should be. Currently there is one. The important thing is that however many there are, they are to the benefit to the student. During Covid-19 some accommodations were made. Ultimately it must be about what benefits the student and the student’s learning. I have no issues with the accommodations we have made here and how they will impact and shine a light on senior cycle reform. We can see more and more that in terms of senior cycle reform and redevelopment we are leaning on much of the learning we had from the junior cycle reform. I have no issues there.

In regard to when we will get back to pre-Covid and the adjustments in that area e have begun that process this year. Last year, for the previous set-up, leaving certificate students in 2022, there were two sets of adjustments on the examination papers. That was reduced this year to one set of adjustments. Bit by bit we are moving back and we have to move back. I acknowledge that other jurisdictions have done things differently. Other jurisdictions also did things differently during Covid but we can stand proudly over how we managed the education system during Covid in terms of how our students and our staff in the first instance showed enormous flexibility to ensure that education continued to be delivered. Equally, where we had the opportunity, for example during Covid, we provided an opportunity where there were the accredited grades and also opportunities for students to lean on the accredited grades and also to sit the exams. I do not believe any other jurisdiction managed to achieve that for students, so that they had the opportunity to take written exams and the other opportunity as well. We are mindful of the need to return and we are doing that, step by step.

In regard to the Dublin allowance, this has been consistently debated over the last while. I have always been open enough to say that everything can be on the table and we have introduced a suite of different measures around teacher supply. The Senator referred to others also but in terms of the Dublin allowance, I would make two points. That is born very much from the London allowance. Comparatively, whatever the salary would be in London, the present salary in Ireland matches what is available in London, including the London allowance. Secondly, it appears not to have solved the situation in London. I say that in passing. It is just an observation. Finally, on that point, it would not be unique to school community staff. In the interests of fairness it would have to impact others, whether it is members of An Garda Síochána, those in healthcare or whatever. Notwithstanding all of that, we are prepared to look at everything, but we have to be mindful of where we stand with it as well.

I am glad the issue of school books at primary school was raised. To be fair, I acknowledge the work that has been done on the ground in the schools to make this operational and to ensure it would work. I have seen it at first hand. I met them over the summer as they got the books and prepared them. I acknowledge that the staff in schools have been the flag-bearers for this programme, they have made it work. I want to be 100% clear, it has nothing to do with the ICT funding. ICT funding was made available on the double to schools over two years. They had double allocations over two years. A significant amount of funding has gone into schools. There is no relationship between the two, and it is significant that over two years we managed to give double allocations in terms of ICT; that is not to say that there will not be funding coming forward in the future for ICT as well.

Finally, regarding the point raised on one of the schemes brought in at post-primary level whereby teachers, if they wished, can work additional hours, and the point made that maybe those additional hours could be shared with another school if there was a cohort of schools either within the area or if there was an umbrella of schools, I am happy to look at that. We also have a teacher share scheme. For example, within the local schools or within an ETB set up, teachers could be shared in cases where the subject was causing difficulty. The timetables might be worked so that the teacher could be two-and-a-half days in each school in a teacher share scheme.