Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

While we are concerned about failure rates in any subject, the failure rates in science are no worse than those found in other subjects, particularly where students might be taking a subject at the wrong level. While the failure rate in higher level junior certificate science is 6.9%, the failure rate in higher level junior certificate history, a popular subject which is taken by virtually everyone, is 6.4%. The failure rate in ordinary level junior certificate science is 4.9%, but the failure rate in business studies is 6.5% and the failure rate in French is 11.7%. Obviously there will be failure rates in different subjects. The failure rate in science is no worse than those of other subjects but I hope that the new syllabus, with its practical element and experiments, will bring about better outcomes.

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