Ms Niamh Crowley:

Our opening statement is based on the summary which we submitted last Friday. I sent a PowerPoint presentation but people did not think it was possible to upload it, so I have supplied members with documents from that presentation. They highlight the key areas we will be discussing. Members also have a portfolio of other material which is referenced in our summary. It is on the members' internal website.

The first point is the issue of entitlement. Here in the Oireachtas it is most appropriate to speak about what we believe is the entitlement of every young person to an historical education. We believe it is essential to our cultural heritage, even more crucially because most people no longer speak our native language in daily life. It is essential also to empower people in a functioning democracy. It is not just the History Teachers' Association of Ireland that believes this. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Education and Skills believe it, and the European Assembly in 1996 issued a recommendation, No. 1283, on the learning of history in Europe, in which it said historical awareness should be an essential part of the education of all young people. I will not quote it in full as members have it in the PowerPoint presentation. This is the reason the history teachers have been campaigning since summer 2011 for history to remain as a core subject in the junior cycle curriculum.

I will briefly mention an argument that has sometimes been made to us, that history is not at present a core subject in all schools. Traditionally, it was not a core subject in vocational schools, which were set up in 1930 to provide vocational training. The rules for secondary schools, which provide for a broad general education, included history and geography for all students. Now, all schools strive to provide a general education for everybody, so this should not be used as an argument to remove history from the core.

We are also aware that in the changing school climate, many single sex secondary schools are amalgamating and are coming under the governance of the vocational education committee, VEC, and therefore governed by VEC rules. However, that is an unintended consequence and not part of educational policy, so we do not believe that should be used to argue in favour of the removal of history from the core.

Our second point is that to provide this entitlement, history must be taught and learned as a full subject and not relegated to a short course or a learning experience. We have outlined three reasons for this. I will mention them briefly, but they are in the detailed documentation sent to the committee. First, we believe history is a discipline and to benefit from that, it must be taught as a full subject. Second, the nature of the study in primary school is necessarily limited by the capacity and understanding of the young people, who really do not achieve the ability to understand abstract concepts until they enter young adulthood. Third, in secondary schools history is taught by specialist teachers. For those three reasons it is essential that it be taught in the junior cycle curriculum. At present, history is usually allocated approximately three periods per week. All that we ask is that it be given this provision in the core for the three years of the junior cycle.

Our third point relates to the practical implications of the framework document. As Gerard Hanlon said, we agree with the aims of reforming junior cycle education. We are historians, not Luddites, and we are not opposed to any type of change. However, at the heart of the framework document is the idea that junior cycle education should be informed by 24 statements of learning. Having pursued those 24 statements of learning, the framework only allows for three core subjects to implement them. Number eight is the statement which would apply in particular to history. Statement No. 8 states that students should value local, national and international heritage, understand the importance of the relationship between past and present events and the forces that drive change. Yet, when one looks at the appendix at the back of the framework document, one finds that eight different subjects, starting with Chinese, are listed as fulfilling this statement of learning. There are at least six other statements of learning that could apply to history, but in each case in the appendix at the back there is no requirement that history be chosen as a core subject.

A final illustration of this comes from the Department's own PowerPoint information for principals. The last slide shows an example of a hypothetical student No. 2, which is slide No. 15 in the PowerPoint presentation.

In the case of student No. 2, the core subjects are down as English, Irish, mathematics and science while history appears in one option band. Some schools may choose it and the students will have an entitlement to history but in other schools it may not be provided or, even if it is provided, students may not use it at age 12 when they enter secondary school and make that decision. It might be said that we are speculating about the negative implications for history but our point is the reality of what happens to history when it becomes a choice rather than a core subject. We can look at the neighbouring island to see what is happening in England. England is often cited, along with Albania, as the only European country where history is not part of the core up to the age of 15 or 16 years of age. History is part of the core until 14 years of age but it is a choice subject for GCSE. The Historical Association and numerous articles and surveys have reported and highlighted the disturbing class divide that emerges where, in middle-class areas and independent schools, history is well represented while in more working-class areas and schools it has been squeezed out for what are deemed to be more useful and easier subjects. In Ireland in the current climate of financial restraint and cutbacks, there may be further reasons history will be squeezed or reduced to a short course.

While all of the foregoing points are universal, we conclude with the historic decade in which we find ourselves. Last June, the Taoiseach stated: "As we move into the decade of commemorations that stretch before us, from the 100th anniversary of the Third Home Rule Bill, the Ulster League and Covenant, the foundation of the Ulster and Irish Volunteers, the Dublin lockout, 1916, the Somme, and beyond it is imperative that the social, cultural, economic, administrative and political environments that shaped these events be understood." It would be an unfortunate legacy of the decade of commemorations if, at its end, a coherent study of the discipline of history in schools was not the entitlement of every one of our young people.