Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the chief inspector and his team for coming in today. I accept we are short on time but the chief inspector mentioned that 10% to 15% of lessons were unsatisfactory. I ask Dr. Hislop to elaborate on that.

Dr. Hislop also mentioned Irish language competence at primary level. I would appreciate more of his thoughts in that regard.

If Dr. Hislop does not have time to answer this question he might revert to me on it. Regarding competence in mathematics at second level, I would like to hear Dr. Hislop's comments on Project Maths in particular.

On the question of whole-school evaluation versus self-evaluation, have all schools done a self-evaluation at this stage and how often are they required to do it? Has there been a drop-off in the whole-school inspections in recent years? How many of those have been done? How is the chief inspector's team staffed in terms of its capacity to carry out whole-school inspections with the number of inspectors he has working with him?

Curriculum overload is an issue we hear from teachers as being a problem, particularly at primary level. Will Dr. Hislop comment on that?

Regarding in-service teacher training, I would like to hear Dr. Hislop's comments in terms of the forthcoming reform of the junior certificate. What are his views on the level of in-service training provided or planned in that regard, and the sufficiency of it? It is particularly relevant in light of his comment on the issue of assessment, which in his estimation is one of the weaker parts of the skill base of the teaching profession. I raise that because there are plans that the junior certificate student award would be assessed by the teachers. I would like further comment from Dr. Hislop on that.

Does the chief inspector have a role in assessing the career guidance provision at second level? Surveys have been done by the careers guidance association, for example, that show that the one to one time between career guidance teachers and pupils has been halved.

Will Dr. Hislop comment on the facility database in the Department of Education and Skills? Does he have the opportunity to utilise information from that? That is particularly relevant in terms of careers guidance. I put down a parliamentary question recently asking for the total hours provided by career guidance teachers in each school across the country. I understand that information is provided by schools to the Department, which then inputs it into the facility database. It should be extractable, therefore, but the response I got from the Department was that it is not its policy to use the facility to extract that type of information. I would have thought that is important, especially-----