I welcome the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, the Minister of State at the Department of Education and Skills, Deputy Ciarán Cannon, and their officials. The meeting will have to finish at 11.45 a.m. because the Minister has another engagement. The first half of the meeting ran over, so it is not the Minister's fault but ours.
Priority issues for the Department of Education and Skills: Discussion
I am accompanied by my colleague, Deputy Ciarán Cannon, Minister of State with responsibility for a number of items in the Department which he will deal with when they come up, Ms Brigid McManus, Secretary General and Ms Deirdre MacDonnell, from central management, who keeps us on the straight and narrow and has prepared much of the work. With the permission of the Chair, I will refer briefly to the letter I sent to the committee secretariat some days ago, which, I understand, was circulated to members. We have listed our nine priorities, literacy, the education (amendment) Bill, qualifications and quality assurance (education and training) Bill - introduced the next day, further education, teacher education, options for higher education. I am quite happy to go directly to questions as my speech has been circulated.
Is that agreed? Agreed.
I welcome the Minister, the Minister of State and their colleagues from the Department of Education and Skills. The Minister has dealt with the Estimates and has taken questions in the Dáil so most of the issues have been covered recently.
At the previous meeting my colleague, Deputy Conaghan and I raised the need to give further education an identity of its own. We raised this during Question Time as well. It is unsatisfactory that it is literally appended on to the second level sector. In the context of the establishment of a skills agency and rationalisation of vocational education committees, is the Minister considering a specific further education sector? If so, would that encompass adult literacy, community education, back to education initiatives and Youthreach? The delivery of those services has been exemplary in recent years, it is a very cost effective model and it should be considered.
In the circulated script, the Minister refers to a 750% increase in the number of appeals on enrolment policy. Is the figure for the success rate of appeals readily available? My understanding is that in the past a very small percentage of decisions were overturned on appeal. I do not know if that is accurate.
The Minister hopes to have legislation on the rationalisation of vocational education committees through the Oireachtas during the course of 2012. Will that mean the new entities will be established in 2013? I reiterate my party's support for the overall proposal to establish 16 VECs, but whether we agree with the particular entities, we agree with the rationalisation of the VECs. The message needs to go to the personnel who work in the VECs that their employment is secure and those currently employed will not lose their jobs.
I welcome the publication of the literacy strategy, and the need for a wider community approach to improving children's literacy and numeracy skills. The emphasis is on the importance of the parents' positive role which is necessary to enhance their children's interest and aptitude towards reading and maths. One issue that my colleague, Deputy Michael Kitt has raised is the investment in libraries. The network of libraries and their infrastructure has been considerably enhanced in recent years. We need further investment, but it would be useful if the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and the Department of Education and Skills could take a joint approach. New library facilities have been established in my county and I know they are heavily used. It is very important for children, who may not have access to computers or reading material at home, that they should be able to avail of these facilities.
A new pilot patronage model was announced in 2007, the community national school. I understand that the five schools established in the greater Dublin area under this model have been working very well. Has any research been undertaken on the success and value of the new community national school model? I advocated previously that the vocational education committee should be considered for the patronage role at primary level.
I will ask Deputy Cannon to deal with the first item, further education, for which he has primary responsibility. I will deal with the other issues briefly.
All committee members may not be aware that a discussion document prepared in the Department was issued quite recently to all the education partners and stakeholders on the issue of enrolment for primary and post-primary schools. We have asked all those we have contacted - members should feel free to respond as individuals or parties as they choose - to make submissions by 28 October. This has been driven by several issues - we do not have the statistics on the rate of successful appeals, but I will have that information communicated to the Deputy. Essentially a problem has arisen when people who have moved from one town to another go to put the child's name down for secondary school and find that children have been on the list since they were three or four months old. That is certainly the experience in parts of Dublin. There are issues about fairness and whether the children of teachers in the school should have priority. We can understand that siblings should have priority and in the North of Ireland we have seen the disruption of families when some children qualify to go to one school and not another, although that system is in the process of changing. It is not that the Department wants to start directing schools as to how to enrol students, we want the maximum level of autonomy in how pupils are enrolled but the issues that have arisen have led to a massive increase in litigation. I do not have the statistics on the outcome of those cases, but I will send the information to the Deputy. It is a problem, and we hope that at community and local school level we will get a response.
On the rationalisation of VECs, I acknowledge the work done by my predecessor and Deputy Smith's colleague, the then Deputy Batt O'Keeffe who initiated the rationalisation of the VECs. It was published during the time of his successor, the then Tánaiste and Minister, the former Deputy Mary Coughlan. The configuration was 16 new combinations from the 33 existing vocational education committees. I accepted that rationalisation but disputed some of the configurations, for example, Tipperary was being split into two different configurations, one with Waterford and the other with Clare and using the GAA colours I have put Tipperary North and South into one VEC. I did likewise with County Cork, combining the county and city VECs to come up with the same sort of configurations. The 22 chief executive officers with permanent job status must be accommodated into 16 posts and there are ongoing discussions between them and their representative organisation and management in the Department to see how they will arrive at a resolution so that we can identify 16 lead CEOs for the new entities such as Cavan-Monaghan in Deputy Smith's case. When that is done, and it is at the discussion stage currently, a decision will be made on the location of the headquarters for the new VEC entity. There is no question of anybody currently working for a VEC losing out as a consequence of the rationalisation. If they are permanent employees they will remain permanent in the system. If they are temporary, it will depend on the demand for labour and that will be dealt with in the normal process and they will retain all the rights they currently have. None of the existing rights that anybody in the system has will be threatened as a result of the proposed integration.
In respect of future legislation, I intend to bring the heads of the Bill, that is the draft legislation, to this committee so that we can talk through it together rather than presenting members with something that has gone through all the process internally behind closed doors between the Department and the Attorney General. On this side of the bench, there is reluctance to open it up again, not necessarily from the politicians but having regard to the nightmare of negotiation Secretaries General and officials have gone through with the Attorney General and others. Rather than go down that route I will bring to the members a draft form known as the heads of a Bill and, with their agreement, we will discuss it. Some of the issues will not be contentious but there will be some meat, so to speak, on the rest of it and political input will be important.
When the heads of the Bill are discussed we will then put it into legislative form and I expect it will be enacted as early as possible in 2012. Once that happens, the two committees, whether it is Carlow-Kilkenny, Cavan-Monaghan or whatever, will meet as one committee in an enlarged form and will continue to meet. There will be no reduction in the numbers. Anybody currently a member of a vocational education committee, VEC, will remain a member of a VEC even if that VEC is now co-joined with another county until the local elections in 2014. In 2014, the legislation will have provided as to what the size of the committees will be in the various configurations related in part, I suspect, to population but that is something we will discuss together. Everybody currently on a VEC, and I speak specifically about county councillors who are elected as the cycle is with the county council elections, will be in place until the next local elections. I have had some experience in the past regarding mergers.
I take the point about the literacy strategy and investment in libraries. In some counties there is a better relationship between library services and schools. Many of the members, like me, are graduates of local authorities and they will know that the libraries are very different now from what they were years ago. There is the full spectrum of IT including electronic, video, DVDs, talking books and so on in addition to access to computer terminals. It is easier to do it if a school is in the middle of a town that has a library than one located in the countryside but I would urge closer co-operation between libraries and the VECs.
On the question of education in the community national schools and the VECs, I am not aware that a comprehensive evaluation has been done yet on that. They have not been that long on the ground, so to speak, but we are monitoring the way they function. I am waiting for the forum on patronage to conclude its deliberations before we make any decision on how the community national schools will function alongside other patron bodies.
I agree with Deputy Smith that serious fragmentation is occurring within the further education sector and that has been the case for many years. Within a very short time, having assumed the role in my portfolio and having attended a number of functions, particularly awarding certificates to those who have gone through our further education system, it soon became apparent that the fragmentation the Deputy referred to is very much present within the system. There is also a very large amount of unnecessary duplication even within towns and counties, all funded by the State, in terms of different bodies delivering effectively the same kind of further education and training.
The Deputy is correct that there is no over-arching vision or one single entity charged with delivering further education and training. It is a system that has almost grown organically in recent years and in general, and certainly in the case of further education, it is appended to our VEC system across the country. If we are serious about lifelong learning and the priority we should afford to lifelong learning it is essential to have a dedicated single body with an over-arching vision as to the reason we want to provide further education, what we need to deliver from it and how we should go about doing that. That must factor into the up-skilling and training sector also. A great deal of discussion and study is occurring within the Department on how we provide that over-arching vision and who will be responsible for making and delivering the vision.
The Deputy also spoke about literacy. I met the National Adult Literacy Agency, NALA, two weeks ago and it highlighted for me the real challenge within the further education system for people whose literacy skills are very low. It is often the case that the people with whom we seek to interact are those who left school not long after their junior certificate. We have a large cohort of people within the ranks of the unemployed, particularly those from the construction sector, whose skills levels are quite low. They left school during a time when the construction sector was booming and assuming it would be there forever. We now find it is not. It is a major challenge to interact with those people and to retrain them and allow them the opportunity to get back into the workforce, restore their dignity and begin to make a contribution to society.
NALA pointed out that many of those who begin to interact with our further education and training sector have very low literacy levels and NALA suggests that we incorporate literacy modules into almost all our training programmes for those who need to access those modules or perhaps seek to retrain our instructors and tutors in our further education and training sectors to be able to deliver literacy intervention, if it is required, in the classroom or the lecture room.
The Deputy's points are valid and I hope that within a short timeframe we will be able to produce reports and suggestions as to how we can provide that over-arching vision, and who will deliver it, and seek to interact in a meaningful way with the large number of people who need to access further education and retraining.
I have several questions on the programme and on the Minister's contribution. The first is on the literacy aspect, which I suppose is a broader issue. There have been major changes in Traveller education with the loss of 800 primary and post-primary posts, all senior Traveller training centres are due to be phased out by 2012, the link with many from a Traveller background in regard to literacy and so on. Will the Minister examine that as a separate issue in the literacy debate? How does he intend to address the issue of the changes signalled in regard to Traveller education, which is a major issue?
We spoke about the governance issue during the debate on the Estimates in respect of some of the universities and what appeared to be abuse and waste of funding in that regard. Does the Minister intend to examine that area as part of his programme during the year?
The Minister spoke about the importance of having a fair and transparent system of enrolment. We would all agree with that but one of the difficulties is that if a child has specific needs, that creates problems in terms of trying to get into the system. That leads me to my next question. While the Minister was away there was a Private Members' motion on the area of special needs assistants, SNAs, and the difficulty regarding that in the education system. As elected representatives we all get representations on certain difficulties that some families face in that regard. Does he intend to examine that area? There are many statistics in the value for money report, which I understand is two years old, but it also mentions the pressure being put on the system in that regard. Does the Minister intend to examine that whole area to ensure that rather than the schools taking on the pressure of the SNAs, a separate structure, whether it be under the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, or some other structure, would take some of the pressure from schools? That is an area the Minister might examine. I am keen that come September this committee would examine that area because that is when the difficulties arise and we can get a better sense of what is happening on it. My colleague will ask some questions later on.
The Minister also referred to the literacy model and support. In my local authority area a successful model, the connect programme, has been introduced in schools. It is IT-based and support comes from the local authority. Has the Minister been in discussions with other local authorities to roll out similar programmes? The programme to which I refer has won awards.
On initiatives, the Minister referred to the school book programme, recycling books and so on. Another initiative announced last year concerned school uniforms. Groups like Barnardos and others raised the issue. Is it something the Minister can pilot? We all know many families will face huge difficulties due to the recession in terms of funding their children. The cost of sending a child to school has sky-rocketed.
I refer to institutes of technology and universities, to which the Minister referred. We need joined up Government policy on this. Many institutes of technology and universities recruit students from abroad, such as China and so on, to try to match funding. Many buildings are lying idle in NAMA. We need to think outside the box. Using such buildings would supplement the local economy, help the education system and bring more students into the country.
The Deputy has covered a number of issues. If I respond very quickly to them he should not take brevity as simplicity.
I cannot stress how important I consider literacy to be. The Constitution recognises the primary role of the parent as the educator of children. I have said loud and clear on many different occasions that a child who goes to bed at night without having had a story read to him or her is a child that is being deprived of a unique experience. All the educational specialists - there are qualified teachers at this meeting - will point out that, by the time a child for whom discourse, reading and learning are part and parcel of the everyday experience and a child who does not, unfortunately, have that experience arrive in junior infants the gap has opened up between them. Parents have a role in this and I would like to see schools engaging with parents and telling them how they can help. Some parents may not have had a good experience of school and may feel intimidated about it. I will not start talking about this because I will not stop.
We will not test children. There is a professional aversion among some teachers, and it is not confined to Ireland. The British experience under New Labour was far from successful. If one is cooking one tastes the mixture to see if there is enough salt or spice. If we are to have standardised measurements in second class, fourth class, sixth class and second year it makes sense to measure how well a child has learned, so that when that child moves with an educational passport, to use a colloquial phrase, when he or she arrives in a new post-primary school with a set of books, a uniform and a passport, the teacher can know if the child has a difficulty with mathematics, reading or whatever. The child who could be in a class of up to 130 pupils would not have to wait until Easter before the teacher finds out that there is a difficulty. As some Deputies and Senators will know the brilliant and very weak children very quickly manifest themselves. They are not the issue; it is person who is sliding under the radar who does not surface but who needs help.
Children go to school to learn to read so that they can read to learn. By the time a child goes into first year if he or she cannot read at the level at which he or she can continue to learn, he or she is in the departure lounge. By the time he or she is in second year and is 14 or 15 years of age, he or she is heading towards the exit. It is a tragedy. The committee should feel free to invite people behind the literacy strategy to come before it. When the draft document was published last November it got an enormous response. The people involved will be more than happy to discuss it.
On education specialism and Travellers, the most suitable approach is to mainstream such children in the education system. We have received that advice from professional educators. We are trying to include them in DEIS schools and our preference for further education is for Travellers to be involved on the senior side. They should be given some degree of priority and preference. Keeping them separate was a policy initiated before my arrival and the arrival of the Minister of State, Deputy Cannon, that we have inherited. I do not agree with it and that is why we are mainstreaming those children.
The governance of higher education was referred to briefly. There is concern within the Department, which I share, about payments that we believe should not have been made in the manner in which they were. We have asked the Comptroller and Auditor general to conduct a complete examination of what has happened over time and to give a report. When we receive that we will decide how to proceed.
The Minister of State, Deputy Cannon, dealt with the debate on SNAs last week and I will ask him to speak, if he wishes, on that issue. The system has been capped at 10,575. It has increased a thousandfold from when it was introduced. There is a great deal of discussion within the professional educational community, including teachers, on the appropriate use of them in the classroom and how they can be supported.
The value for money report stated quite clearly that the original mission of the SNA as envisaged has drifted. I will allow the Minister of State to outline where we go from here. We have 4,000 primary and secondary schools, 10,500 SNAs and about 60,000 teachers. We have to consider how we redeploy resources.
On school books and uniforms, I met the Society of St. Vincent de Paul recently. It has done an enormous amount of work and is probably better equipped to report the difficulties at the coalface for families struggling to pay for both. We are examining both issues. In the census form that goes to primary schools which has to be filled out in October each year, as some committee members will be aware, we are asking 3,200 primary schools for the first time if they have a school book lending scheme and, if so, how it functions.
We need to see what is out there. We will write to all 730 post-primary schools asking what schemes they have. I met two representatives of the school publishing system. The jobs and employment component is on the publishing side. Most of the printing is done elsewhere. We discussed the revisions of textbooks which prompt a change in books. There will be no initiative this year because we need to get data on lending schemes and how we can co-ordinate activities with the publishers.
While we set curriculums at national level and the State Examinations Commission sets exams, schools and teachers have a degree of discretion in the books they select. On school uniforms, we need a commonsense approach. I would be interested in suggestions from members. If schools can decide to have grey, maroon, blue, green or red-----
It is nice.
As a boy the school beside mine was Sion Hill and the red school uniform worn by the girls still resonates with me.
A vote has been called in the Dáil. The Minister may not be able to return to answer questions. There is enough time to take questions and the Minister can provide replies via correspondence. We have to reconvene. We will take the questions in the order in which they were submitted.
The ideal situation would be getting schools to sell badges and crests to parents and allowing them to shop around for good value. If it is confined to that range of colour, it should be possible.
We have three or four minutes for questions before we must leave for a vote in the House.
On a point of order, my two officials are happy to remain to answer questions if the Senators wish to continue.
That is fine.
I congratulate the Minister on his document on literacy and numeracy which is very innovative.
It was a collective effort. I will not claim credit for it.
I will quickly list the issues. I am worried about teacher training. The Minister stated he would undertake a national campaign to alert parents to the importance of reading to children and I ask him to do that. I refer to the appointment of classroom assistants. The former Minister said she would introduce community employment schemes and in my view this is a very good idea, particularly in large classes and in junior infants classes. I ask the Minister to look again at the role of the SNA, special needs assistant, as it needs to be expanded. I ask him to write to school principals because many parents have not been informed of the supports available next September to their children with special needs. This is very unfair on parents.
I assure the Deputy we will return after the vote.
Yes, I am flying through my questions because they are important. Why did a VEC school in west Dublin-----
I cannot take personal questions on particular issues. We are dealing with general topics.
Why does that school not have a board of management?
That is not a question for today's meeting, Deputy.
Tá cúpla ceisteanna agam. There seems to be a change in how patronage is being selected and which would put gaelscoileanna at a disadvantage. Previously if a gaelscoil had 15 or 25 students, it could apply to become a gaelscoil in a locality but I believe the Department is carrying out surveys. In general, gaelscoileanna are not the majority desire in an area but they usually attract significant demand once they are up and running. We would not like to see that excellent stream hampered in any way. Some secondary schools, the gaelcholáistí, do not have textbooks in Irish for a number of different subjects. There are significant issues of capacity in areas such as the commuter belt.
I warmly welcome the Minister's reconfiguration of the VEC sector. He has done a great job. I welcome the Minister's strategy for literacy and numeracy. Is dyslexia part of the strategy? A lady of my acquaintance who has dyslexia left national school feeling utterly stupid.
I have a question about the leaving certificate applied programme. I have the impression there is less enthusiasm for this programme. I was chairman of the committee for the leaving certificate applied programme for five years so I know something about the subject. I am very enthusiastic about it. I have the impression there is less enthusiasm in the Department now than previously. Is this possibly the correct impression?
I have some questions about reform of the leaving certificate programme and the issue of Irish as a compulsory subject. What are the Minister's views as regards the balance between conversational Irish and Irish as it is taught at the minute?
I note the City of Dublin Vocational Education Committee is to take sole responsibility for the administration of the grants. I have concerns regarding possible delays as a result of staffing issues. I am from Galway where colleges were threatening not to allow students to sit examinations until such time as fees were paid. There had been a backlog in the administration of the grants. How will the system work when the City of Dublin VEC is involved? I raise the issue of prefab classrooms. The Minister of State, Deputy Cannon knows about the issue of schools continuing to rent prefabs when this does not seem to be the correct value for money policy.
I thank the Minister for waiting. Wherever private enterprise thrives in a public education system there will be gaps in the system. This is the case with the business of grinds which is thriving. The Minister said that learning to read is critical and that one reads to learn. He has put his finger on it. Reading is the key and I welcome his strategy. Will he consider asking the NCCA to devise guidelines so that second level teachers are required to teach a learning how to learn component, independent learning skills, in each subject class? This is why rote learning is emphasised above those critical skills. That is a critical question.
I will answer the questions when we return from the House.
Sitting suspended at 11.25 a.m. and resumed at 11.40 a.m.
I will make the point on higher level education I had intended to make before the suspension. How does the Minister decide how much they should allocate to research as against teaching? What will be the policy on that in the future?
Regarding special needs, I visited a school in Donaghmede recently that will not be able to continue with a particular class. The class, which has only seven or eight students, was created by the parents themselves. The work it was doing was impressive but I gather it will not continue. My question is not about that school but about the way the Department makes a decision in regard to those areas.
Senator Healy Eames may finish asking her question.
I thank the Chairman for allowing me to contribute because it was a rush.
The Minister is still short of time and therefore we are still in a rush.
I am delighted with the Minister's renewed focus on literacy and numeracy. I reiterate the question. The Minister rightly said that learning to read is critical to reading to learn. We have a problem at second level whereby the system is reliant on grinds to get children over the bar, so to speak. There is something fundamentally wrong with a public education system, with the amount of investment of resources allocated to it, in which grinds are so prevalent. I spent €75 a week last year to get my own son through the junior certificate. It is wrong at every level.
First, will the Minister ask the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, to provide guidelines to ensure that each subject teacher adopts learning how to learn strategies and approaches, and practises them in the class with the students, by subject? That will ensure the children will acquire independent learning strategies as opposed to rote learning strategies.
Second, regarding school libraries, I understand from many sources that schools need help setting up and maintaining class libraries because space is a consideration and they often do not have room for a school library. Would the Minister consider giving support in that area by tying in the librarians, the teachers and the parents because as he said, a child who is read to at home is at an incredible advantage?
From my own experience as a teacher and a teacher educator going into classrooms-----
The Senator should conclude.
-----the reluctant reader is missed frequently. He or she does not fall below the bar of needing support. They are not the top students but they are the students who fall gradually into the section that will need help. They can read but they do not read. Will the Minister examine measures that could help in this regard?
I thought there was a God when I heard the Minister's proposals to introduce 50% continuous assessment in the junior certificate. We know children learn differently and perform differently in internal examinations.
Is there a question?
Will the cap of eight subjects only for the examination be introduced?
My earlier question may have been misunderstood. I was referring to the new vocational education committee model which will not have a board of management.
Would it be possible to make career guidance teachers available to students when the leaving certificate results come out? While there has been much talk about special needs assistants, there is a real need for adequate resources to be provided for occupational and speech therapists in schools. There are not enough adequate places available for children with moderate special needs who leave school, particularly in south Dublin and Dún Laoghaire.
I am new to the committee and am very much on a steep learning curve. I am delighted to be a member of this committee having worked for 32 years in first, second and third level education. I am interested in the Minister's literacy and numeracy project in that it includes auralacy, as it is extremely important across education. A great let-down in the university system is that one does not have to be qualified to teach in one. Senator Quinn also referred to the level and quality of teaching in universities and I am delighted this is part of the Minister's agenda.
We are delighted to have Senator O'Donnell on board as well.
Regarding the teaching standards of Irish language teachers, they go to the Gaeltacht at the end of their teacher education year but, from what I am told, it is viewed more as an end-of-term celebration rather than a chance to improve their spoken Irish. Will this be reviewed with their time in Gaeltacht areas increased and changes made to when they go there?
Regarding the balance between research and teaching, various university principals claim ideal college lecturers would teach 40% of the time, research another 40% of their time and make themselves available to students for the remaining 20%. Research is not confined to people in laboratories. One must renew oneself as a teacher as do politicians or retailers.
Research in that sense is as much applicable to someone teaching history as to someone developing cutting edge technology. Science Foundation Ireland and the PRTLI, Programme for Research in Third-Level Institutions, made moneys available in an innovative way in that it forced collaboration between different institutions and departments with some very good outcomes. There are mixed views as to the balance between the payback from the commercialisation of research products to enhancing the ability of a researcher or their collaborative efforts. The jury is still out as these are relatively young programmes but they are infinitely better than what preceded them. International indicators show we are very high up in specialist research areas, even world leaders in several of them.
Based on the value for money report on special needs, how we assist children with special needs must be revisited. As a non-professional educator, I am hearing conflicting opinions on this matter. The value for money report called for a review of the programme. The special teaching assistants, which is a different matter, is an issue that could be raised. I would welcome an input from the committee in this regard. It can take the views of and question all the specialists in this area and form its own review.
I am familiar with the school in question in Donaghmede. There were 13 ABA, applied behaviour analysis, schools which dealt with autism teaching on pretty much a one-to-one basis. The staff were not qualified teachers but more qualified specialists and psychologists. After a long four-year negotiation between different players in the education sector, those 13 schools have been mainstreamed. The staff are paid as teachers. I had the honour of re-opening the Drogheda ABA school as a mainstream one. This is an area where there are divided opinions, however.
Regarding Senator Healy Eames's questions, part of the strategy for literacy and numeracy is to extend the three-year teacher training programme for primary to four years, with the final year being set in the classroom. Teachers have to go back to learning how to teach. Regarding Senator O'Donnell's similar question on college lecturers, the Hunt report specifically stated lecturers also have to learn how to teach.
I read that.
This will be part and parcel of the recruitment process for third level lecturers. Candidates will be measured on their teaching ability as well as everything else.
If the spend on grinds by Senator Healy Eames to get her son through the junior certificate is indicative, it would be an interesting statistic to present to the teaching profession as to why so much money is spent on grinds.
The qualification for secondary school teachers, formerly the HDipEd., will be a two-year qualification from now on.
When will it start?
It will start with the next cohort of students. With a massively increasing school-going population, we no longer have the luxury of people describing themselves as history teachers. I want to hear, "I am teacher who currently is teaching history". A history teacher must have as much responsibility for literacy as distinct to getting the facts correct for, say, the date of the Battle of Clontarf.
There has been mission drift in the teaching colleges. There used to be a point where people were called to training, as the phrase went, with a two-year course at Mary Immaculate College or St. Patrick's College. While it is welcome that most teachers now have a university degree and teacher training is part of the university system, they must get back to the skill of teaching.
Mr. Harold Hislop, chief inspector, and Mr. Alan Wall, director, Department of Education and Skills, told this committee in January why more boys than girls are reluctant readers of school library books. Most books in school libraries are romantic stories.
Is that a factor?
Most of the books tend to be female orientated. Mr. Eamon Murtagh, assistant chief inspector, told the committee more technical books tend to attract boys. For example, guys can drone on for hours about football with endless statistics trotted off which shows they can demonstrate an enormous amount of knowledge storing. Boys would more than likely prefer to read sports annuals, for example. The balance of books in school libraries needs to be examined.
Will the Minister look at the balance of the percentage?
Does it have anything to do with the fact that there are more female teachers?
And more male principals.
(Interruptions).
It is more a question of fiction over fact. Young men, whatever their interests, are more inclined to read books based on fact rather than fiction. This is what is coming through on the specialist advice.
On reform of the junior certificate, there has been a mistake in the way matters have come out and I must accept responsibility for that. We are not saying that one can teach only eight subjects in the junior certificate curriculum. A student can study a number of subjects, but will be examined in only eight.
I would like the marking system to revert to what it used to be, where there was honours, pass and fail and where there would not be the 5% gradations that exist in the leaving certificate, because it is not the same as the leaving certificate. It has become a dress rehearsal for the leaving certificate.
An incremental examination.
Yes, incremental. There is much work being done and we will publish some of the detail.
Will that happen in 2012?
Yes. The cohort entering in September next to do the junior certificate in 2015 will be the first cohort to sit an examination in only eight subjects.
Will it be on a continuous assessment basis?
That is not necessarily the case. We still must get agreement on that.
That is an important part to move on.
I know that. The most important aspect is getting an agreed methodology of how one does it. However, we are working on that area.
I think I have covered everything.
Finally, will the Minister ask the NCCA to include the independent learning strategies as a component of subject teaching?
I am told we are short on time and there is somebody else coming into this room.
The Minister has more than dealt with all of the questions. This meeting was merely to engage the minds.
On behalf of the committee, I thank the Minister for being present today and for his frankness in answering questions. I also thank him, the Minister of State and the officials for their willingness and openness to work with the committee on many issues in the coming months, something to which we look forward. No doubt we will be back here on a regular basis.
With the help of my officials, I will send the committee a note on the questions we did not get around to answer, but I would be happy to come back at any stage.
I propose we go into private session for the remainder of the meeting.
The joint committee went into private session at 11.53 a.m. and adjourned at 12.02 p.m. until 9.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 27 July 2011.