Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests. It was interesting to listen to the answers to questions posed by my colleagues. I hope I will not be repeating too much, but we do develop themes as we go through meetings. I firmly believe that we must have a form of secondary school education that looks more like a transition year every year. Education, and secondary school in particular, is fundamentally about the transition from school to adult life. Young people want to be valued members of society and they want to practise what adult life is like. The current school system does not allow that, beyond that brief period in transition year. All the students love that aspect because it is about reaching out and experiencing life outside school. I would like to hear the views of the witnesses on that point. I ask for their comments in this regard because the fundamental reason people do not take up apprenticeships is in school they are practising an academic way of being in the world and then they continue that approach outside of school. They see that as being what they are supposed to do. We must ensure that what happens in school looks more like apprenticeship programmes to encourage people to choose apprenticeships after school.

I would also like to hear the views of the witnesses regarding having an approach to the leaving certificate that is more akin to mentorships.

I think work is being done on that, particularly for the junior certificate, but if we took that approach of people who are expert in particular skills mentoring young people, it might bring us closer to where we need to be.

I wonder about the number of subjects. This comes up quite a lot. There is an argument there about greater specialisation and I wonder what the witnesses think. We have a long history of specialisation in subjects. We do not get enough from half an hour or an hour of a subject per day. We probably need young people to start choosing what they want to study much earlier.

As for the question of doing interviews, according to PhDs or even witnesses in legal cases, people from outside Ireland often address the fact that we are a very close-knit community and there may be bias. Is there some merit in looking at that and widening the net if that is the route we are to go down? Continuous assessment probably makes a bit more sense because, as Deputy O'Sullivan said, I am not sure what can be got from somebody in 15 minutes.