Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We had a pandemic over the last three years and it was science that helped us find our way through it. We are facing a climate disaster and it will hopefully be science that helps us through that. We have to facilitate the scientists of the future through our education system. We need to empower the teachers in the teaching profession and the colleges of education to ensure they are equipped to bring the joy and love of science into the classroom. There is a gender element to this, as the Minister will appreciate. Because our education system is more gender-segregated than any other in Europe, traditionally all-girls' schools have struggled in this area. There are suggestions that girls have not been afforded the same opportunity to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, and science-based subjects as boys would have been. In the forthcoming citizens' assembly on education, there is an opportunity for us to flesh out what we are discussing here this afternoon. Certainly we have a disproportionately segregated education system, which I am constantly going on about. Some 17% of our primary school children attend gender-exclusive schooling and it is one third of our second-level schools. That leads to gender stereotypes and lends itself to restricted subject choice. Coming out of the time of Covid, we should have a much more expansive model of education. If a subject is not available because of limits in teaching staff or qualifications, there is no reason we cannot have remote learning from a centralised source so every student in every school in the country can study whatever subject he or she wishes. We have to be able to empower all students in all schools to study science. I am particularly conscious of that gendered element. It has been spoken of before. Unless we proactively deal with it, we are going to have these problems into the future. I suggest to the Minister that we can include this topic in the wider conversation of the citizens' assembly on education. It is important. I also echo the points my colleague, Deputy Sherlock has made about the Minister's trip to Cork in the coming weeks.

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