Dr. Ruth Freeman:

We see that fewer than 20% of the students taking physics and chemistry are girls. That is a key area of concern as we are seeing a real gender divide there in the sciences at leaving certificate. Mr. Donohoe just talked about artificial intelligence. If we look at science now, digital skills are actually embedded across it. Even if a person is going to work in the area of biology, there is no doubt he or she is going to be working on digital skills. There is an argument to say we could have a core set of science skills.

We touched on this earlier. I think Deputy Conway-Walsh talked about schools being measured by students getting 97% conversion to university with other schools getting much lower levels. There is an argument that schools with 97% conversion are failing huge numbers of their students. There are probably many students in that cohort who are perhaps very technical and would do very well through STEM routes, in apprenticeships and in other kinds of STEM-type roles. Perhaps we could do that through having other routes as well, through STEM in the leaving certificate, and not just a points race with these three very clearly divided subjects that, because of stereotypes, attract very different cohorts of students to study them. That does not really represent science in the real world.