Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of our guests for attending today. I had to step out, but I was listening in my office. I thank them for their contributions. First, to Professor Collins, the argument about the education system is that its very function is to maintain social order and to control the social order. This offers us the opportunity to look at what social order we want and, therefore, what part education plays in that. I feel very strongly about this issue. I have guest lectured in pedagogy for several years. I see the students who come out of school and the narrow-mindedness of some of them. Others really want to explore things. The education system has worked for some, but the people on either margin are the ones who suffer. I told the Minister, Deputy Harris, last week that I do not think it is only about vocational skills and apprenticeships. I strongly feel people who are very gifted academically are also fundamentally failed by the system. That must be addressed. It is too easy to look at this as a question of developing apprenticeships or developing an education system around what our economy needs. That is not what education should be about; it should be about thinking. I enjoyed what Dr. Gleeson said about knowing, doing and being, from that perspective, because we do not know what the future holds.

A few questions came up about what others are doing and whether there is anything better out there. If COP26 has taught us anything, it is not to look at the lowest common denominator. We now have a chance. The programme for Government provides for a citizens' assembly on education. This committee, the NCCA - faults and all that I recognise - and the Department are all doing work. There is a moment now where we could leap forward. We could be leaders and we could look at all of the problems. As Professor Looney has stated, when you think about the context we are in at the moment and the massive challenges nobody predicted, now is the opportunity to make these massive changes.

Professors Stobart and Hyland both made an interesting point on the willingness of teachers to move ahead with a different way of doing things. We have seen, during the pandemic, how the leaving certificate has changed. Students changed it, if you ask me. They had not done that before. There was a certain amount of that kind of difference in approach to assessment. Perhaps there is an opportunity there that we have not seen for the past 40 years.

We should not forget that by being overly practical. While all of us, as thinkers and policymakers, want to be practical and have a practical route, we might also want a quite imaginative route. Those are my few thoughts on the matter. We are now having a fairly broad discussion. I would welcome further thoughts from the delegates. I have been very concerned about siloing generally since I entered politics. While I am concerned about different Departments doing different things, I believe the amount of siloing within one Department is incredible, as is evident when we look at the work of the NCCA. As has been pointed out, that its work is being done at the same time as the kind of work we are doing makes absolutely no sense. How can we be persuasive? Since everything the delegates are saying will go on the record, how can they persuade people that it is critical that we break down the barriers, remove the opaqueness, stop infantilising individuals who are almost adults, regard teaching as mentorship rather than instruction, and assess what adults have managed to instruct almost-adults on.