Ms Moira Leydon:

I wish to come back to the issues Deputy Martin raised. This idea of an inventory should not be seen as a type of stand-alone census. There are many ways to build up a database. As the Deputy said, there are statistical returns from schools, the GIS and the refurbishment strategy with the SEAI. The point is that the Department needs to develop a better database on the current capacities of schools. To give a specific and good example, we had a phenomenon in 2003 when, following a very critical OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA, report on Irish students' achievement in science, the Department of Education and Science decided to review the science syllabus and introduce a new syllabus which had far more activity learning and whereby 30% of the marks in the junior cycle examination would come from practical, experimental laboratory work. An extraordinary phenomenon developed whereby the ASTI and the TUI kicked up a stink about this because we said we simply did not have the laboratories to move from the text-based approach to the more active learning approach. The Department conducted an audit of the science facilities in schools to implement this new curriculum. It found that a number of schools were simply unable to proceed and they were given derogations to postpone introducing the new science syllabus for a year until they got the facilities they needed.

Looking at our new, internationally and politically high-profile STEM strategy, we need to carry out the same type of implementation analysis. We need to ask whether we can do it. I have spoken to the schools about this because I co-ordinate the ASTI research annually with the external consultant. A number of schools informed me they did not apply to adopt the new leaving certificate physical education examination for the simple reason that they could not provide the range of options required. I should know this off the top of my head but I think there are a minimum four and an optional four. These schools simply could not provide the eight optional physical activities to meet the requirements of the PE programme.

I strongly urge Deputies and Senators to accept that when we talk about curriculum change and its implementation, we need also to look at bricks and mortar and what is happening at school level. It would not be wrong to say that one of the reasons for teachers' animus against and concerns about the profound change the new junior cycle curriculum represents was that they had questions about where it would be done and whether we had the facilities needed to do it. They may seem like very simple questions in the face of innovative change but they are the kinds of questions that practitioners ask. Unless those questions are addressed, practitioners become resistant because they do not have the tools, the resources, to act.

I will conclude on that point. We need to be a little creative about the concept of inventory, particularly in the context of curriculum change. As Mr. Duffy said, we are now moving into a similar process of change at senior cycle. We should not be facing crucial questions of resistance to change simply because we do not have the resources to implement it. It is up to legislators to ensure conditions are in place to facilitate optimal approaches to change.