Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

Transition year is a valuable programme for students that offers opportunities to develop future life skills for personal, social and academic development and to experience other aspects of adult and working life. Transition year can bring a unique and important value in the life of students.

Each school designs its own transition year programme, within set guidelines, to suit the needs and interests of its students. In establishing its own distinctive programme content, schools are advised to take into consideration students' needs, parents' views, employers and the wider interests of the local community.

As part of the redevelopment of senior cycle programme, a new transition year programme statement was published in September 2024, which provides schools with a framework for developing their own bespoke transition year programmes.

Over the 2024-2025 school year, all schools had the opportunity to audit their current transition year offering and revise it, where necessary, in line with the updated programme statement. The new programme statement now applies to programmes commencing in the next school year, 2025-2026, across all schools.

Sixty thousand students will avail of transition year. There is a real opportunity, which had not existed in the past, to make sure that what they are doing in that time is as effective and supportive as possible for them, and in some of the ways the Deputy outlined.

The programme statement sets out four student dimensions as the core foundations upon which transition year programmes should be designed. The four student dimensions centre on personal growth, being a learner, civic and community engagement, and career development, respectively. The being-a-learner dimension, in particular, offers the opportunity for schools to offer additional learning experiences to transition year, TY, students, including life skills and literacy and numeracy initiatives.

The programme statement continues to offer schools a significant level of autonomy while placing more structure on the design of transition year programmes.

What would be helpful, at this stage, given it is a new statement for transition year and that so many more students are doing it now, is that there would be a review at a certain point to see exactly what type of programmes and what type of modules schools are using, how effective they are and how students are responding to them. That could inform any changes that might need to be made.

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