Mr. Humphrey Jones:

On the practical work, one of the strengths of the new junior cycle specification is that there is an overarching strand, the nature of science, which has placed more emphasis on critical skills and experimental design. However, there is a real lack of specified practicals. While I am not trying to hark back or anything, the old course had a list of mandatory practical experiments that each student would complete over his or her three years. The idea was that it would develop certain critical skills that were necessary within science, be they practical laboratory skills using various pieces of equipment or just data analysis skills. A lack of a prescribed list within the learning outcomes means, first, that teachers have to come up with them. That is fine; it is a good challenge. It might mean that there are gaps among pupils within certain schools where a certain type of skill is not developed.

The Senator is right that everyone wants to do science and gets excited about doing science experiments. Although the good meaning behind the nature of science strand is to promote more experiments, it has meant that fewer experiments are being carried out in the classroom. This means that when students reach the leaving cert, they do not have some of the basic skills that are necessary for tackling a leaving cert chemistry, biology or physics course. That is certainly a concern. We would love to see some sort of reward for pupils for carrying out their work. In the old course, 35% of the overall junior cycle mark was for the practical course they carried out and 100% of their grade now is for an experiment. They have class-based assessments, CBAs, and one of those is an extended experimental design. However, it only tips the iceberg in terms of the kind of skills we would like to develop with junior cycle science.