Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein)
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119. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason a school (details supplied) has yet to receive textbooks from his Department for the new politics and society course for the leaving certificate curriculum despite being previously informed that these books would be available from 1 September 2017; and when these textbooks will be provided to the school. [48346/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The Department of Education and Skills does not publish or promote school textbooks for any subject, at any level. Where textbook publishers wish to produce books for any particular subject, this is entirely at the discretion of publishers. Equally, it is at the discretion of teachers and schools should they wish to use textbooks where these are available. The Department, through both the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST) and the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), has provided training, guidance and resources for teachers in Politics and Society since Phase One of the subject’s introduction began in 2016, and will continue to provide such support, including online support. Participating teachers have also been supporting each other by pooling and sharing resources, with the encouragement of the PDST. As this subject is so strongly rooted in current affairs, and is so strongly linked with active, student-centred methodologies, these are other factors which suggest that the absence of textbooks should not be seen as a drawback to delivery of the subject in any way.

The Department has had no involvement in any apparent guarantee to produce textbooks by September 2017, but is happy to advise that sample examination papers have now been made available by the State Examinations Commission. These can be accessed at the links:

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These sample papers, following on from sets of sample questions provided previously to teachers by the NCCA, should help to give a general indication of what the eventual examination papers may look like, but it is important to stress that teaching and learning should always focus on what is required in the subject specification primarily, not in textbooks or examination papers.