Ms Breda Naughton:

There was a question about a lack of consultation. Significant consultation was carried out when the NCCA was developing its framework on the junior cycle. When the framework was sent to the Department, the Minister looked at it and felt it did not go quite far enough. That was where he changed the assessment, in particular, but the remainder stayed the same. I know the History Teachers Association had meetings with the Minister and in the NCCA framework document it said they would only study a minimum of eight subjects and a significant plea was made to increase that to ten subjects. That was taken on board.

There are 21 subjects in the junior cycle and they will be implemented on a phased basis. The best way to describe how consultation will happen is to have a look at the NCCA website and it has the specifications for English, so the viewer can see how the consultation process goes ahead. It will be similar for all the other subjects. There will be experts from the History Teachers Association and third level involved in the development of the specifications.

There is a commitment to provide funding for the training of teachers in this area of €10 million per year. There are adverts out at present to get the team together for the junior cycle CPD team, which will be led by Dr. Pádraig Kirk. It is interesting at the moment that history is not a compulsory subject for 50% of schools but 90% of young people take history in the junior cycle. That equates to 53,161 last year. When we go to leaving certificate, however, the numbers drop dramatically, with 11,746 taking history last year. The drop is already there and we want to make the new specification for history attractive so young people can see it as a realistic option, rather than learning, as some of us did, dates by heart and not analysing and understanding the relevance of what is going on.

We have a significant cohort of history teachers in the system and the teachers themselves have high expectations and aspirations. They realise the importance of their responsibility for encouraging young people to move on from history at junior cycle to leaving certificate level.