Mr. Paul Crone:

The decision to make history a compulsory subject affirms that. A word of caution going forward is that post-primary schools do not serve the purpose of training people for the workforce or for university. We need to be protective of our post-primary schools, where post-primary education is what the term itself describes. We are still producing well-rounded individuals who will be capable of meeting all of the challenges they encounter. They will receive their workplace training or get their third level qualification at a different place.

I mentioned the cliff edge and pathways that can sometimes hamstring post-primary education. We look at forcing people to specialise too early, when they are still trying to find themselves and their skills and talents. We need to be mindful of that at post-primary level, in particular.