Dr. Ruth Freeman:

I would like to address a different point and perhaps Ms Costello will address the digital question. On the love of learning, we know that enquiry-based learning is critical. Teaching people to learn gives them a love of learning. Our evidence from our interventions with primary school teachers shows that confidence is the big issue there. I echo what Mr. Donohoe said; we need to focus on the teachers and we need to recognise those who are doing the CPD, particularly the CPD that is offered by other organisations outside of the formal Department of Education structures. We also need to recognise the opportunities and real world learning that exist outside the classroom. We can cleverly integrate this into assessment modules that are evidence-based and that can be objective. We need to be careful not to think about what we did during the pandemic as the best we can do in terms of continuous assessment. That was an emergency response and we have a lot of excellent research that we should lean on to show us how we can do that better.

I will touch on computer science briefly. We have concerns about computer science in schools. We still see low levels of girls taking computer science in school and we see high drop-out rates at university level. We have all agreed on the emphasis on digital skills so that is a concern.