Mr. Humphrey Jones:

The AI guidelines are also a personal interest of mine. Our members did not have any guidance whatsoever on them despite its first having been promised in April 2024. It took 18 months – 568 days – to get a 38-page document. It was not sufficient. Even the document produced yesterday, while welcome, is very much aimed at school leaders and subject teachers. It provides guidance on how they should manage AI internally within the school, and particularly how they can support its safe use and protect student data. However, there is almost no guidance for teachers in the document on how to use AI or what useful uses of it are. There is no information on how students could use it either. Of course, there is no doubt there is potential in it but it has to be navigated very safely. There is nothing in that document for teachers to navigate this space safely with students. Crucially, the document has nothing whatsoever on how AI might impact assessment, including in respect of the 40% additional student components. That has been skipped and referred to the SEC. We are promised a follow-up document.

At the moment, all guideline documents for leaving certificate projects or assessment work have a couple of lines on AI, stating that if students use it, they must reference it, and if they use it and do not reference it, it is plagiarism. However, if they use it and do reference it, they still do not get marks for it. It is very confusing for a student because they are told they can use AI and also told that if they do, they will not get marks for it. There is such a grey area.

On funding, we absolutely welcome the €12 million that went towards preparing labs and equipment for the courses. It works out, on average, at about €17,000 to €20,000 per school. I teach biology. For example, my school, if it were in the free sector, would have received only about €4,000. There is a particular piece of equipment required for one experiment in the new biology specification – a genetics experiment – and that equipment alone costs €5,000. Therefore, the money is gone straight away. Many schools are simply not able to afford to buy the equipment or to be imaginative by sharing it between schools. For years, we have had underfunding, with no ring-fenced funding for science, so it is too little, too late.

Crucially, on funding, there is no provision for new laboratories. The only mechanism for laboratory upgrades in schools is the climate action summer works scheme, which will not kick in until next summer. Schools are implementing the programme from this year with no promise of getting the upgrades. The current mechanism is not appropriate because if a school has a leaky roof and a lack of science laboratories, it will, because it can apply for only one project, pick the leaky roof. Therefore, the students will be left lagging behind.