Mary Moran (Labour)

I welcome the Minister back to the House. I understand that the debate is on junior cycle reform, but I would like to make reference to Senator Mac Conghail's speech. As a music teacher for over 20 years, I wish he could have been in the classroom at times when I was in utter despair. I welcome his words and I agree wholeheartedly with him as a teacher in a socially disadvantaged school. I taught children from severely disadvantaged backgrounds to play an instrument, to perform in an orchestra, to travel abroad with us and to continue on to third level education. These are the things that have given me the most pride in my career to date.

I welcome the news of the changes to be implemented in the junior cycle reform. As a teacher for more years than I care to remember, I wholeheartedly agree that with the changes in innovation, technology and our general way of life, our approach to education should embody a realistic shift from the rote learning system that we have had for years to a more broad-based system which will encourage our students to think more independently. This will, in turn, ensure that they are more prepared for life after school.

Being examined in only eight subjects at junior cycle will take away some of the pressures that our young students experience in schools today. In my own school, students have told me that they chose their subjects for the leaving certificate not because they had a particular love for the subject, but because the percentage of A grades in that subject was higher, and would enable them to get more points for their chosen course of study. That speaks for itself. Students in many schools study in excess of ten subjects for the junior certificate and indeed my own children studied 12 subjects. Even more worrying is the number of 15 year olds who study 12 subjects in school and then take extra subjects outside school, which places an unnecessary amount of pressure on them. This leads to more problems and I wonder how much of this information can be realistically retained.

From my own experience in schools, I have increasingly found that students count their junior certificate and indeed leaving certificate results in terms of the amount of A grades they achieve, rather than the amount of honours or passes. When I did the intermediate certificate, as it was called then, it seemed to me that students certainly did not get as many A grades as they do now.