Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister, Deputy Harris. He has great energy in the Department and a good, driving team around him. I say well done on that. As a teacher, part of me still believes there should be one Department of Education from top to bottom. I know some would say that some days it makes sense to have two separate Departments but on days such as World Science Day it probably does not make sense. That is just my personal view as a teacher; it is not the view of the Government. I have always held the view that real scientific learning is probably the child out in the back garden taking apart a radio with a screwdriver and hitting it a few belts with a hammer. We learn so much from that, or from dipping a jar into the local pond and looking at what is in it.

A few years ago, I was part of a group of teachers in County Clare which the Government tasked to take part in a pilot study for STEM, bringing science, technology, engineering and maths into the classroom. It was fantastic and raised the bar of learning so much. I expect we will see that trajectory go across the system into second level and, please God, into third level. There needs to be a better equipping of that kind of STEM teaching because we were pioneers in the movement and did the course. We had to go back to schools and ask students to start washing out their yoghurt cartons and bring these and lollipop sticks into schools. We told them to ask their mothers to finish the butter quicker so we could have the Dairygold tubs and that we needed Pringle tubes and every other kind of resource we could possibly have to make robots, electric circuits - you name it. There needs to be a proper equipping and resourcing of schools.

I saw the most fabulous teaching locally online this week. Schools are putting up all sorts of videos. I cannot pay tribute to them all. One school I saw was in Cratloe, where Katie Campbell, Ian Hughes and Aaron Carroll were involved. Some of the lessons I saw online involved marshmallows and cocktail sticks. There is all sorts of incredible stuff happening in schools and it must be supported.

Last Friday, I took off the shirt and tie and went back to the jeans and jumper. I substituted in a school locally that is experiencing a crisis due to a shortage of substitute teachers. It was an eye-opening day and I loved it. I was back doing what I did for 16 years. I began the day making "PAW Patrol" jigsaws and we moved on to long division, problem solving and everything else later in the day.

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