Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 7 March 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills

The Future of STEM in Irish Education: Discussion

Ms Moira Leydon:

The Cathaoirleach is right about the variable quality of the transition year programme across the sector. There have not been too many evaluation reports but that is one of the common conclusions of the departmental evaluation reports. The solution to that is twofold. First, a complete review of the transition year programme, the curriculum content, is being undertaken now by the NCCA. It will bring a degree of standardisation without it becoming uniform. One of the strengths of transition year is that schools can use it to address some of the learning challenges or other types of challenges in the school community. That is good. I should not be saying this in a way, but we do have an inspectorate whose job is to make sure that the programmes are being delivered in the fashion which is required.

On how we can improve things, I will sound like a broken record on this. Schools get additional teacher allocation in terms of transition year programmes but they do not necessarily get any significant additional funding on which to deliver them. If we are talking about having more innovative transition year programmes with perhaps more CoderDojo brought in, or digital literacy skills, all of that, we are going to have to upskill the teachers, bring in concessionary teachers, pay for external services to come in or a combination of all three.

If we are talking about making STEM a more central feature in transition year, and I do not mean STEM in terms of subject base because transition year is not about a subject-based curriculum, it must be dynamic and hands-on. There must be trips to the factory, the farm or whatever. That all costs money and of course money is something schools do not have. To recapitulate, number on,e the new programme will set a kind of new standard. Number two, we need to give funding to schools, a capitation grant so to speak, to enable them to put in place innovative programmes. Number three, we really need to give teachers the support so they understand and feel competent and confident enough that they can deliver a STEM dimension throughout all the transition year activities.