Mr. Kieran Christie:

I thank the Chair and the committee members. The ASTI is always positively disposed to meaningful curricular development. The current redevelopment of the senior cycle has some welcome aspects but the implementation of the programme, in our view, has been too rushed. In late 2024 and early 2025, the ASTI and our colleagues in the TUI called on the Minister, Deputy McEntee, to pause the programme to enable an already stretched system to adequately prepare for a more orderly introduction of the first tranche of the nine subjects. Unfortunately, the Minister decided to drive on with implementation. In May 2025, the ASTI and the TUI balloted our members on a set of proposals included in the document called Senior Cycle Redevelopment: Implementation Support Measures. While our colleagues in the TUI accepted the terms set out in the document, the ASTI did not consider the measures to be sufficiently comprehensive and we rejected the proposals. This matter is now being dealt with within the terms of the dispute resolution mechanisms of the Public Service Agreement 2024–2026.

ASTI members’ concerns regarding curricular reform at senior cycle span a number of key areas. The former Minister for Education, Deputy Norma Foley, prescribed that there should be a minimum 40% marking allocation for additional assessment components, AACs, in each subject. While this presents no difficulties in some subjects, for others it is problematic. For instance, it is the view of the ASTI, shared by a large body of opinion within the scientific community in Ireland, that the allocation of 40% of marks to the additional assessment components in the science subjects is inappropriate and should be lowered to 20%. The Department of Education and Youth has also received extensive representations in that regard from the Irish Universities Association, IUA, and our colleagues in the Irish Science Teachers' Association, to name just two. Mathematics is another subject about which our members have a similar concern.

Another key concern remains regarding the revised leaving certificate engineering specification with the removal of the day practical exam from assessment. The former syllabus had three assessment components, the design and manufacture project, the written examination and the day practical. The new specification reduces assessment to only two components, the design and manufacture project and the written examination, with the day practical omitted. Many ASTI members are deeply disappointed by this decision, as the day practical provided a vital opportunity to assess students’ precision, problem-solving and practical hand skills, which are fundamental to engineering education.

In terms of resources, the three science subjects, biology, chemistry and physics, are included in the first tranche of subjects rolled out for the redeveloped leaving certificate in September. In many cases, ASTI members advise us that their schools are ill-prepared to accommodate the enlarged requirement of engagement in practical work associated with the new syllabuses. Laboratory facilities are insufficient and substandard in many schools and the Department of Education and Youth neglected to carry out an audit of facilities nationwide prior to the introduction of these revised subjects. Funding has been provided for consumables but capital funding, where necessary, has not been made available. Unlike the practice across many other OECD countries, laboratory technicians and other support staff are not employed in schools here either, and that adds to the frustration in the roll-out. Moreover, the ASTI is unaware of any risk assessment procedures being implemented in schools regarding the enormous growth in practical activity in science laboratories. Indeed, the current safety guidelines for laboratories are also quite old and in need of updating.

Moving to training and continuing professional development, CPD, in 2023, the ASTI annual convention and our colleagues in the TUI adopted a motion that asked that the Department of education, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, and the State Examinations Commission, SEC, would publish the full range of syllabus documentation for all future leaving certificate syllabuses concurrently and not less than 12 months prior to implementation of the syllabus. The syllabus documentation should include a detailed syllabus, comprehensive guidelines, examination papers and marking schemes. We acknowledge that this material has issued for the tranche of subjects that commenced in September, but it was in a very piecemeal fashion and the last element was issued just last month.

The training plan for teachers of the new revised subjects spans four years. However, tranche 1 of the new and revised subjects were rolled out in September, meaning two sets of leaving certificate students will complete these subjects before teachers are fully trained. This is concerning for our members.

On the teacher and student workload, teachers and students will both have extra workloads and new time-consuming work practices imposed on them in the implementation of the new subjects. This includes materials preparation, storage, compilation and the uploading of material for SEC examination purposes and so on. The Department of Education and Youth has not produced adequate proposals regarding the additional time required by teachers to sufficiently support students regarding the additional assessment components.

Generative artificial intelligence, AI, of course, is a major topic and no comprehensive guidelines are yet available to teachers on the use of AI in the production of materials by students for assessment, save for a general acknowledgement that students will be permitted to use generative AI tools when completing their AACs and a requirement that students will need to reference the use of AI tools. The big concerns for teachers were well captured earlier this year when the State’s AI advisory council stated in a report that efforts to detect students who pass off work generated by artificial intelligence as their own will not succeed because of the technology’s sophistication. The report noted, “It is now clear that detection methods do not and will not work".

The ASTI is aware that the Department of Education and Youth is setting up a task force to focus on the appropriate use of AI in senior cycle redevelopment and assessment and the State Examinations Commission is also commissioning research. In our view, however, it beggars belief that the new senior cycle redevelopment programme is up and running and teachers are grappling with this new reality in all our lives, and the Department of Education and Youth and the State Examinations Commission are doing no more than setting up task forces and commissioning studies. It further underlines our earlier submission that the whole programme has been too rushed and should have been paused.