Ms Meadhbh Costello:

It is very important that we develop people and graduates who have the capability to critically analyse and develop information, in addition to acting on it. Embedding this critical thinking into second level, and even primary, education will be so important. The fact is rote learning tests people's ability to recall information at a specific moment in time, but does not necessarily allow people to critically analyse and assess that information because they are training for a very specific final examination, with set questions, etc., they can prepare for. We need to look at how we can assess those pieces around critical skills and critical thinking. That comes back to things like looking at project work and the modernisation of some aspects of further education that could be brought into the second level education stream. We should also look at things like portfolios of achievement and even external options for different project-based work that can all build up that critical thinking component. That will be very important as we see technologies being developed incredibly quickly. How can we respond to that and to challenges such as Brexit and Covid? That requires a very high aptitude for critical thinking.

Businesses are often very focused on STEM subjects but, equally, multidisciplinary learning that combines the humanities with STEM subjects will be incredibly important as we go forward. We need the technologists who can develop new technologies and resolve very technical issues, but we also need, for example, behavioural economists, coming from the humanities who can tell us how to apply these new technologies, and who can create that type of behaviour change we need around issues such as climate change, which we have even seen during Covid.