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Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 5 Nov 1981

Vol. 96 No. 6

Independent Curriculum and Examinations Board: Motion (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:
That Seanad Éireann welcomes the Government's intention to establish an Independent Curriculum and Examinations Board.
—Senator G. Hussey.

It was Plato who said that the noblest of all studies was the study of what man is and what sort of life he should lead. Down through the centuries all the great minds, the minds of the great philosophers, thinkers and educators have been wrestling with the problem of defining education. Needless to say, nobody has come up with the perfect definition, but all definitions have what one might call a common denominator. Education has to do with handing on the best that has come down to us from the past; it has to do with the development of the individual and his potential in the present and it has to do with the development of the personality and potential of that individual in view of the life he has to lead in the society in which he lives in the future. In that context we might do well to look at the opening paragraph of the foreword of the White Paper on Educational Development, published by the Stationery Office in Dublin in December 1980 which states:

An educational system serves a dual purpose — to conserve traditional values and to prepare for the future. It provides for the task of interpreting the essential features of a social and cultural heritage and, at the same time, that of preparing the young for life in a society characterised by ever-accelerating change. And, if it is to reflect those needs which, indeed, it helps to create, it follows that the system itself will undergo a continuous process of adaptation and development.

Education is a vast world and, for convenience sake, I will divide it into three sections. Section one: man must earn his living, he must feed, clothe and shelter himself and his family; section two: man lives in a society; and section three: man has a soul, he has a personality which he must develop. He has a choice of living a good or an evil life. In short, we have vocational education, social education and spiritual education. In the area of vocational education, we will have technologists, skilled workers, doctors, dentists, surgeons, engineers, technicians and so on. In the social area we have all that has to do with the social services, educational, health, welfare services, justice and, in fact, all those items which one will find listed in any good civics syllabus. I cannot emphasise strongly enough at any stage of my address the importance of the subject which has come to be known as civics. It is a subject which is of the greatest importance at all levels from primary right through to the very top. Certainly, we could do with more civics and more respect for the subject known as civics than obtains at present.

Spiritual education fits a man for living well and it is very difficult to define. It is something which must permeate the whole vast continent of education. If I read a short passage from "Education for a World Adrift" by Sir Richard Living-stone, we might get a better idea of what I have in mind. This is a description of the training of a Greek child in the Fifth century B.C. and the same underlying principles ought to apply today, not alone here but everywhere. The quotation is:

Education begins in the first years of childhood. As soon as the child can understand what is said, nurse and mother and the father himself exert themselves to make the child as good as possible, at each word and action teaching and showing that this is right and that wrong, this honourable and that dishonourable, this allowed by God and that not allowed. At a later stage they send him to teachers and tell them to attend to his conduct far more than to his reading and writing. And the teachers do so, and when the boy has learned his letters, they put into his hands the works of great poets, and make him read and learn them by heart, sitting on his bench at school. These are full of instruction and of tales and praises of famous men of old, and the aim is that the boy may admire and imitate and be eager to become like them. The music teachers, in the same way, take care that their young pupil learns self-control and does nothing wrong, and when they have taught him to play, they teach him the poems of good lyric poets, and set these to music and make their harmonies and rhythms familiar to the children's souls, in order that they may become gentler and more rhythmical and harmonious and so fitted for speech and action. For the life of man in every part needs rhythm and harmony. Then they send the boy to the teacher of gymnastics in order that the perfect body may serve the virtuous mind, and that he may not be compelled by physical defects to play the coward in war or in the other activities of life.

While that may seem somewhat narrow — and I am not denying that it is rather narrow — it forms the basis of the theme of my short address today. If the moral aspect, the thing that brings out the best in us, were to apply across the board, what an improvement we would have in our society at all levels.

This vision of excellence should permeate all the curricula at all levels. It should permeate and influence the curricula in the training colleges, in the universities — even down to the nursery schools themselves. We have a great wealth to draw on — for example, our folk tales: Fianna Eireann, Fionn Mac-Chumhaill, na scéalta gaile agus gaisce, An Ruaraíocht, the heroes of old and the heroes of recent times. One thinks of Cúchulainn and Christy Ring, God be with them all, our saints, our scholars, their lives, the sufferings they went through patiently binding their will to the will of God at all times. They made sacrifices, made no complaints. There was no going on strike, no sulking. That spirit should permeate every part of the curricula. We owe it to our Christian way of life and to what has been handed down to us from the past, because our Christian way of life and our language and its culture form, in my opinion, the main ingredients in the recipe which enabled us to survive through centuries of privation and persecution.

It was Whitehead, I think, who said that moral education is impossible without the habitual vision of greatness. Today, as we all know, we are living in a world where we could do with far less arguing and disputing between various divisions of the various Christian churches; they should be all together in one fight against anti-Christ. Anti-Christ can be heard sometimes — alas, too frequently — from some of the great educators of the present time. I am not speaking about formal education but about those things that influence our thoughts and our actions. We cannot even walk down the street without being educated because we have educators all around us. We could call the advertisements we see in the shop windows educators. We could call the big posters and the placards educators. Television is a great educator and the various reporters and commentators on television and radio and with newspapers can be great educators. We are all under their influence. Some are excellent, some not quite so good and others are certainly very harmful, portraying before us, especially before the youth, how desirable it is to accept the philosophy of a consumer-orientated society with the emphasis on divorce, abortion, contraception and all these evil things.

The result is that we have, not alone here but in other countries, a great erosion of moral standards. We should take a positive action through our curricula to counteract this so as to give the models of the best behaviour to the rising generations. Subjects that could in a special way help to mould the youth are music, art, music appreciation, athletics and games with the emphasis on sportsmanship, poetry, song and the sean-fhocail. A thing that has been to a large extent neglected in our educational system is the great wealth of wisdom and knowledge in our sean-fhocail. I can still remember the sean-fhocail I learned when I was a little child. I did not fully understand them until years afterwards, but they gave a wealth of knowledge and enlightened me in the ways of life and its intricacies and in the many deceptions that people meet as they go through life.

While I am on that subject I would like to recommend that in all curricula a little more emphasis be placed on memory. I was a casualty myself in as much as when I had a chance to memorise much more than I have memorised, I just let it pass me by. There is a time in our lives, say from our seventh or eighth year, or even earlier, up to about 14, when we can memorise and commit to memory extraordinary amounts of knowledge absolutely effortlessly. I think we are rather neglectful of memory at present. I am not suggesting for a moment that it is deliberate — but we should use the 7-14 years period to get the children to memorise more. They can do it effortlessly and they can absorb an enormous amount of knowledge, poetry, song, literature and so on. Perhaps we have that gift in a particular way here in Ireland because the great scholars of pre-Christian times, the druids, had phenomenal memories, but the disaster was that they kept all the knowledge in their minds and never committed it to writing. That was a great pity. We can only conjecture what their vast amount of knowledge actually amounted to, but it was there. Ag an bpointe seo caithfidh mé labhairt mar gheall ar chúrsaí Ghaeilge agus ins an leabhar a luas cheana, an Páipéar Bán ar Obair Oideachasúil, tá sé seo le léamh ins an chéad alt:

Is í an aidhm náisiúnta ná an Ghaeilge a thabhairt ar ais mar mheán cumarsáide ionas go mbeidh pobal fíor-dhá-theangach sa tír. Cé nach féidir leis an gcóras oideachais amháin an aidhm sin a bhaint amach, is léir go bhfuil áit an-thábhachtach aige i mbeartas slándála na teanga.

Thar aon rud eile a tháinig anuas chugainn is í an Ghaeilge an tseod is luachmhaire dá bhfuil ann agus is teanga fíor-álainn í agus is linn féin í. Is minic a bhíonn fonn orm na Sasanaigh a mhalachtú as ucht iarracht a dhéanamh — agus rinne siad le héifeacht é — an Ghaeilge a chur faoi chois. Rud chomh hálainn, chomh saibhir len ár dteanga dhúchais níor chóir é a chur chun báis. Buíochas le Dia tá an Ghaeilge slán fós agus ba cheart go bhféachfaimís chuige go ndéanfar gach iarracht trí dhea-shampla, agus trí bhearta fiúntacha agus trí úsáid a bhaint as gach gníomh agus gach úirlis dá bhfuil ann, chun í a neartú agus a leathnú. Ní hionann sin agus a rá gur cheart faillí a dhéanamh sa Bhéarla. Is Teanga dhomhanda is ea an Béarla. Is féidir leis an dá theanga dul ar aghaidh ar chomhchéim agus má éiríonn linn é sin a dhéanamh tiocfaidh sé go héasca ar ball do na scoláirí na teangacha eile a labhairt. Is fusa do dhuine a bhfuil dhá theanga aige teanga eile a fhoghlaim ná don duine nach bhfuil ach teanga amháin aige, agus mar sin de. Ar leathanach 16 den Pháipéar Bán sin tá sé seo le léamh:

Tá scrúdú á dhéanamh faoi láthair ar an gcaoi in ar féidir leis an gcóras craolta idir radio agus teilifís cur le cúrsaí oideachais na tíre. Sa scrúdú seo déanfar cúram ar leith do áit na Gaeilge go háirithe maidir le cláracha oiriúnacha a chur ar fáil do pháistí óga, do lucht bunscoile i gcoitinne agus do thuismitheoirí a bhfuil páistí acu ag freastal ar na bun scoileanna.

Tá sé sin an-thábhachtach. Tá súil agam go rachaidh an tAire ar aghaidh leis an scéim sin. Tá a fhios againn go bhfuiltear chun clár éigin a chur ar an dtelifís sar i bhfad. Is inmholta é sin, mar dá mhéad Gaeilge a thagann ar chluasa an duine is ea is éasca a thiocfaidh an chaint chige. Níl éinne ins an seomra seo is dóigh liom nach dtuigeann cad tá á rá agam. B'fhéidir nach bhféadfadh sé labhairt go tapaidh mar fhreagra ar a bhfuil ráite agam ach is dóigh liom gur féidir le gach duine mo chuid cainte a thuiscint.

Tá súil agam go bhféachfaidh an tAire agus an Roinn chuige go ndéanfar an caighdeán Ghaeilge a ardú i scoileanna de gach chineál agus gach leibhéal agus go háirithe go dtabharfar aire faoi leith dos na hábhar múinteoirí atá faoi oiliúint sna coláistí oideachais. Tá sé an-thábhachtach go mbeadh an Ghaeilge ar a dtoil acu siúd nuair a thagann siad amach. Rachaidh mé ar aghaidh agus labhróidh mé ar feadh tamaillín bhig ar na scrúduithe.

Examinations, like the poor, will always be with us. We have all found fault with examinations. I speak with over 40 years' experience of teaching and examinations, of setting papers, marking them, teaching children of all ages and both sexes. I still cannot make up my mind whether we should abolish examinations or go all out for examinations. The best I can offer is this. We must have examinations, but we might be able to help in written examinations by a constant practice at examinations beforehand, for the sport of doing the examination, so to speak. If we could take away the tensions from the examinations so that they could become a thing of joy and pleasure, then the examination would be a very useful exercise. We should have examinplenty of practice at examinations beforehand. Maybe we should have examinations at an early age, internal examinations. I often did that. I would say to the children: "We will have an examination some day next week but we will not get excited about it. We will all sit down and we will enjoy it. The questions will all be nice and easy. I want you to lay out the answers neatly and this is how I would do it myself", and I would give them examples. If we could get used to this idea I think it would take a lot of the tension away. The Minister rightly referred to the tensions that arise in the home before examinations. They are enormous. I know that. I have often seen children, ex-pupils of my own, getting into a dreadful state of mind when the leaving certificate and intermediate certificate examinations came along. Of course, it is the pressures and all the talk that goes on about them that causes the trouble. Parents can be guilty also. They can pressurise the children by wanting them to be as good as the children down the road and that sort of thing. No two children are built the same; no two minds are the same. What will suit one will not suit another.

An examination often reminds me of a hurling or a football match. You know how it is. You play a match today at 2 o'clock and lose it but if that match were postponed until tomorrow morning at a different time you could possibly win it. One is not in the same form every morning when one wakes. We would all agree on that. Neither can children be in the same form every day that they sit for an examination. There are cases where children do the leaving certificate and the matriculation in the same year. They are amazed when, in a certain subject they get an A in one examination and they only get a C or a D in the other examination. They just cannot explain that. They say the examiners must have been wrong. What happened was that the child was probably in very good form for one of these papers and maybe the luck was with the child. There is a lot of luck in examinations also. The questions can run with you or against you.

But overall, we must keep the national examinations because they have set standards, the same papers are presented all over the country from Cork to Donegal, and the same scoring system is used by all the examiners. Personal assessment is very good. I did a lot of that myself and made out my own intelligence tests. But I always had the suspicion that no matter how careful I was I could be a little more disposed to one child rather than another. If there was a child who was not very healthy or had some physical weakness or something like that, I might be inclined to mark that child a little easier than I would a strong child who could not care less about this, that or the other.

These are all problems. As all educationalists in the House know — and we have quite a number on both sides — if all the books written about examinations were to be collected they would more than fill this room with all the arguments for or against. All I can say for examinations is that we should try to have the best preparation possible for them and supplement them with intelligence tests that can be done. But then I suppose it cannot because no matter how carefully you make out the intelligence tests people can be coached to do them. But there is always the oral examination in which I have very great faith, because one can see the child, meet the child, calm the child and let the child be his or her natural self.

That is about all I propose saying on this subject. The paper read by the Minister was very interesting. There are some very good points in it. Then there is the White Paper which I am sure everyone has read and studied. It is a splendid document. It gives a lot of factual information and shows that quite a lot of what came in the Minister's speech had already been started in the Department. There is now the question of whether or not we should have an outside, independent board apart from the Department to set up and examine curricula and supervise examinations. It raises very many problems, and I am looking forward to hearing the debate as it goes on.

I would like to preface what I am going to say by welcoming the Minister to the House — we did not have an opportunity to do that last week — and to thank him for the remarks he made in his opening speech about the Seanad and about the value and potential of the Seanad. They were very much appreciated by all of us.

I welcome very much the opportunity Senators have been given to examine what is an extremely important subject. To approach this whole question of a new educational departure by asking for a committee of the whole House of the Seanad to discuss it is a refreshing way of approaching Government business, and something all Senators will welcome. There is, of course, an enormous amount of food for thought in the very comprehensive speech the Minister made to us last week. As Senator Cranitch has mentioned, this House has among its Members an enormous number of teachers from every level of the educational system. Easily 25 per cent of the House, if not more, are teachers at some level of the educational system. Therefore I expect and hope that there will be a valuable debate for the Minister and valuable input into his planning programme in this important departure.

Apart from teachers in the House a great many of us are parents and, I suppose, we have all been through the educational system and therefore we speak from varying viewpoints on this question. The major problem facing the educational system in Ireland at the moment — despite recent assertions to the contrary — is the problem of the inadequacy of the public examination system. Contrary to Senator Cranitch's apparent acceptance that examinations will always be with us, I would like to say that I hope examinations will not always be with us, certainly the kind of examinations we have now. I would prefer to see examinations of the kind we have now totally abolished, and I say that after considerable thought.

We are not, obviously, the only country where there is some problem about the examination system. Many other countries are conducting a lot of research and soul searching into this area, and many have come up with different evaluation systems which do not rely on the kind of examinations we have.

Interestingly enough, I came across an article in The Financial Times of 3 November, 1981 entitled ‘Where are the schools failing?’ approaching the whole subject that we are discussing today and setting out from the point of departure that the present system is failing the educators and the society of Britain as much as I believe it is failing us here. The British Secretary for Education and Science, Sir Keith Joseph, is not a man I would quote on a lot of areas, but I think what he said on this subject is relevant to us. He said that the greatest single educational problem is the educational service's failure to develop the potential of so many of its young clients. This is what we are talking about: the development of the potential of people, not only young people but all people going through our educational system.

The Minister's speech was so extremely wide-ranging that if one were to take it bit by bit one would detain the House for a month, let alone a couple of minutes. I certainly do not intend to go through a large number of areas. I just intend to touch on a couple of areas where I feel some valid input might be made to this debate.

First, the very title the Minister has put before us in the wording of our motion, to establish an independent curriculum and examinations board, is something we should pause over and consider, because there are certain inbuilt assumptions in a name like that. The whole concept of independence in a board like this is something that has to be discussed because it obviously cannot be totally independent of the Government or the Minister. Yet one would desire that it would be as independent as possible. But to describe it in bold terms as being independent seems already to misname it and assume something which may not be possible to carry through. Another word in the title of the board which worries me is the word "examinations". After all, I would have hoped that in this discussion we would be examining the very relevance and viability in future of examinations as we know them. So I really would prefer to substitute some other word for "examinations", because examinations are only one method of evaluation and assessment. I would suggest that instead of calling this board the "independent curriculum and examinations board" we call it "the national curriculum and evaluation board" as it seems preferable to something which has loaded terminology in it. To call it that is more in keeping with the very exploratory and open-minded spirit of the Minister's speech which he made to us last week in opening this debate.

The Minister proceeded then to discuss quite early in his speech the concept of relevance of the curriculum. The relevance of the curriculum was only touched on quite briefly by the Minister and he only gave one quite fleeting example, which was that one would have to consider relevance in the context of an urban learning situation and a rural learning situation. There are so many other aspects and areas where relevance comes into play. I believe that the relevance to different socio-economic groups is absolutely vital, that relevance to women and sex roles in society generally is a very big question which has not been satisfactorily tackled by the Irish educational system. We have had some lip service, some quiet intentions expressed. But we certainly have not tackled the whole question of the roles in society of men and women and the way boys and girls are steered towards certain roles. Curriculum content in that whole area is absolutely vital. One only has to consider the continuing depressing figures of the differences in areas of study between boys and girls in the leaving certificate to realise that we have not begun to tackle that question seriously.

I will take the 1979 figures which are the most recent I could get. In 1979 15,784 boys did the leaving certificate and 19,726 girls. Of those boys over 7,000 went into third level education and of the 19,726 girls, 5,000 went into third level education. That is a pattern which got worse in 1980 when just over 15,500 boys did leaving certificate and 7,200 entered third level education; 20,500 girls did the leaving certificate and under 6,000 of them went into third level. The 1980 figures of girls proceeding to third level, despite the fact that so many more of them did their leaving certificate, show that there is a depressing pattern there of different expectations and different movements of girls and boys in the educational system.

In 1979, 9,500 boys did honours maths in the leaving certificate and just over 5,000 girls; 10,000 boys did physics, 1,748 girls; 10,438 boys and 5,500 girls took chemistry; and the most telling figure of all, 15,000 girls took social and scientific home economics, as did 378 boys; and 10,000 girls and 234 boys took general home economics. These figures are illustrating something we all know, and we have been told it time and time again. It is time now that that problem was tackled.

There are other minority groups to whom the curriculum must be made relevant, although women by the examination entry levels are in the majority. Itinerants, the handicapped and even the very small Jewish minority among us have very special needs which must be catered for by a flexible curriculum relevant to each group's needs. I see that flexibility as only being made possible when it is carried into practice by the experts in the classroom, the teachers.

I want to touch for a moment on the increasing number of children leaving school on their fifteenth birthday without any kind of certificate. Any young person who has been through the education system up to the age of fifteen should have documentation and assessment for all those years spent in the system, whether of not he or she has taken some one-day examination.

The Minister mentioned in his speech a new intermediate level examination. I would be much happier if we concentrated on building up a long-term profile of children in the education system which would take account of their various attributes, which would take account of knowledge, the cognitive area, which would take account of behaviour — the effective area — and which would take account of the wide range of manipulative skills. That kind of general profile of young people should be built up over years and should not be kept in some secret filing cabinet inaccessible to various class teachers. It would be accessible at all times to the class teachers, to school principals, to the students themselves, to parents and to the children's counsellors so that the child can be helped to develop in the best possible way. An examination sprung on young people on one day to sum up all the years they have spent in the system is a nonsense. I would like to see us getting away from that sort of approach.

I am sure the Minister is aware that there are projects in progress in different schools on early school leavers. These are going ahead very successfully. I believe the Minister knows about them, and if he does not I am sure he will be made aware of them.

We must really get away from any idea that young people will make decisions at fifteen or sixteen which will be irrevocable life decisions and will shape the rest of their life pattern. It is essential to mention the growing number of young people who, having left school at fifteen, find themselves unable to find work and unable to get the dole at that age. They are totally victims of circumstances outside their control and they are turning up back to the school system with a simple and rather dramatic attitude of "What am I going to do now? Entertain me." That is an enormous challenge to educators and to schools and I believe it will have to be tackled in a most imaginative manner by pre-employment courses, by citizen-oriented courses, by general courses which will equip them to be full citizens, not the courses which have already failed them in life and which have brought them back to the schools feeling failure.

I would like to mention the implication of the Minister's recent decision regarding the raising of the entry age to primary schools. That does have an implication for the junior cycle finishing age, and I am sure the Minister has considered this. The fifteenth birthday will be arrived at before they have finished or come any way near certificate level. If the school leaving age remains at fifteen there will be a great many more young people leaving school without any certificate at all and without having completed the cycle. That is obviously an implication of the recent decision which must be taken into account.

In the whole area of curriculum development where there is a great deal of work going on to which the Minister referred, we must hope that we will begin to get away from the very rigid subject-oriented academic style curriculum we have had up to now and consider the whole question of modular approach to education where packages are designed in groups of subjects, groups of activities, and the students will pick, with the advice of their counsellors, elements from different packages with an emphasis on one particular one. They will get credits for taking a particular group of subjects and these subjects will be designed remembering that many people may wish at a later stage to return to the educational system to fill in the missing part of whatever packages they were taking. The modules could be divided into programmes geared towards work, career oriented programmes, research programmes, vocational skill programmes, academic programmes. This is a whole new approach which is being worked on in various areas and it would be immensely preferable to the very rigid subject choice approach we have now.

I do not think the Minister mentioned in his speech the Adult Education Commission Report which is due in 1982. In any approach to new curriculum and examinations theories there must be a very important place made for continuing education. Any new board which is going to set about this important job must include the whole area of continuing education. I know that the Minister has not got a rigid approach towards when schooling finishes. The Minister said in his speech last week and I quote:

It is important that we view the education of our young people as a continuous process throughout all the years spent at school.

I would totally agree with that sentiment. I would perhaps delete the word "young" there. I would say that we view the education of our people as a continuous process throughout all the years spent in the education system.

Obviously it is wrong to put an artificial full stop after certain little groups of educational years—one cannot do that —people's education does not stop at 15; it does not stop at 18; it does not stop at 23. We need to broaden the whole attitude towards education and towards adult participation in the system.

Another area I want to touch on is, of course, a terribly vital area of which the Minister was very aware in his introductory speech is the area of the actual composition of this board. I am quite sure the Minister realises what a hornet's nest would descend on his head if every single group that felt it had a right to representation on the board started getting very aggressive about it. We need to get away from a rigid system of having a board which makes all the decisions in this area because if there were to be one board studying curriculum and examinations, with all the relevant interest groups represented, one would need to hold the meetings of that board in the Phoenix Park since there would be so many people involved. The criterion for membership of the board obviously must be, first and foremost, professional competence in the area of curriculum and evaluation. That goes without saying. But there are very many other groups which should be included in such a board. I would like to suggest that there should be a small board at the top of this system with a permanent secretariat. At this point I would like to suggest that the permanent secretariat exists already. It exists in the curriculum unit of the Department of Education which was established in 1977. At present it is staffed by members of the Department's inspectorate under a steering committee consisting of senior administrative and professional officers of the Department. It spans both primary and post-primary education.

I am quoting now from the Minister's speech.

The following broad aims were identified for the work of this unit.

There are three broad aims laid down for the work of this curriculum unit. I would like to suggest to the Minister that those broad outlines would constitute suitable terms of reference for the secretariat of this new board. One was — and again I quote from the Minister's introductory remarks:

to develop a conceptual framework for curriculum by analysis and evaluation of the existing curriculum and, as ancillary process to construct and evaluate alternative models.

2. to establish norms of attainment, to identify and account for deviation from those norms and to propose appropriate action.

3. to evaluate curriculum innovation both in relation to individual disciplines or subjects and to wider areas and, where necessary, to propose initiatives in curriculum development.

I know and the Minister has explained to us that the unit is operated with personnel drawn part-time from responsibilities in other areas. But I do think that that curriculum unit, with those terms of reference, forms already a very suitable permanent secretariat for this new curriculum and examinations or evaluation board the Minister has put before us.

The small board and the secretariat could set up consultation arrangements on a permanent or sometimes temporary basis with various specialist and expert groups, in liaison sometimes with existing bodies and sometimes calling an ad hoc group together. So much work has been and is being done in this whole area that if we get into a situation of setting up a whole new set of experts we shall be reinventing the wheel and we will duplicate the good work that is being done in the area already. In these times of economy, indeed every time, let us use the available work being done, let us not duplicate and let us not set up new systems when no such systems are needed.

With a view to establishing interesting guidelines for the setting up of the machinery of this board and its manner of operation I would suggest an examination of the way the NESC board operate. They have a very interesting system of operation which could be very valuable in this area.

At this point I want to ask the Minister a question. At the beginning of his speech he said that among the education measures he had taken since assuming office was having the recruitment of teachers excluded from the general recruitment embargo applying to the public service. To begin to make new departures in the field of education it would seem that the inspectorate would need to be excluded from that general embargo also. We cannot make progress where it is urgently needed without the tools to help the teaching profession and the education system to adapt to the new areas. Therefore I would ask the Minister seriously to consider excluding inspectors from the general embargo on recruitment to the public service.

On the question of continuous assessment, I was slightly worried by what I thought I saw as a negative or perhaps slightly defeatist attitude on the part of the Minister to the whole concept of continuous assessment. I hope I am wrong in that because I believe that continuous assessment, while there have been problems identified in dealing with it — some of them were mentioned by Senator Cranitch — can be brought to a very efficient level at which it could constitute a more valuable tool in the education system than examinations. Instead of looking at continuous assessment as a supplement to examinations I would prefer to talk about possible examinations as a supplement to continuous assessment.

The curriculum development group jointly run by the VEC and TCD have done an enormous amount of work in this area and this is continuing. I am sure the Minister is well aware of that work. There is also a lot of work being done in Britain in this area. By no means have the people working on continuous assessment written it off, or even considered writing it off, as an extremely valuable alternative to examinations.

It is obvious that continuous assessment has pitfalls. The Minister and Senator Cranitch referred to some of them. The main problem seems to be a sort of natural bias on the part of teachers who have begun to investigate systems of working together in groups, on assessments, of working on student portfolios, of working on standardisation methods. The educational word being used for that process is "cross moderation". There is no need to be depressed about the future of continuous assessment as an alternative to examinations. There will be a break-through, and I believe the breakthrough will be soon.

The Minister made a strong point when he said that the cart has been put before the horse in the matter of examinations versus curriculum. It seems to me that we have been designing our curriculum not for the requirements or the skills of people who will grow up to become involved in democracy, but we have been designing the curriculum to suit the requirements of universities or employers. We have been putting our students into a very narrow straitjacket and denied them fulfilment of their potential.

In his opening speech, the Minister said that the curriculum, what is in the courses, what students are doing during their school years, is the important thing and that the assessment of what they have achieved through that curriculum is the second thing. So the all-important job is to establish a relevant curriculum and, secondly, to establish fair, valuable and viable ways to assess the students' progress.

The Minister mentioned en passant the training of teachers and I should like to say at this stage that it is essential that in-service courses for teachers and the initial teacher training courses will have a large element of new educational thinking on curriculum development, on planning, on evaluation and assessment procedures. Obviously no departure, no new educational advance can be made unless the people on the ground, the experts who are putting it into operation, will be not only fully briefed and fully co-operating, but part of the planning process and part of the new ideas on education. Obviously teacher-training courses nowadays which would be subject content only, would be a misnomer.

The Minister referred to the committee which sat on transfer of students from primary to post-primary education and I should like to mention how important it is that the recommendations of that committee would be brought into the designing of a new junior cycle. That is vital.

There is also the problem, which the Minister spoke of, of the ICE committee which issued a report in 1975 which has been on ice ever since. That committee sat to examine the intermediate and group certificate examinations and made important recommendations about moving away from examinations. I will quote a short extract from the ICE Report — The Final Report of the Committee on the Form and Function of the Intermediate Certificate Examinations, Stationery Office, Dublin, 1975. They proposed to move away from the rigid public examination system. The ICE Report states:

The structures proposed attempt to shift the responsibility for courses and assessments to groups of teachers, offer them forms within which they can easily co-operate, and at the same time ensure national recognition of junior cycle accomplishments for those who need it. It is based on the conviction that the quality of education throughout the system will, in the long run, be commensurate with the responsibility in professional matters especially in the devising and assessing of courses carried by the classroom teacher. He or she is the first guide of the student's work and should be the first assessor of the student's success.

That is an extremely important statement. It encompasses flexibility, the de-emphasising of public examinations. When you boil it down, public examinations are a test of memory recall on a certain day and a certain time. Public examinations test how well a young person can spew out a whole lot of facts acquired providing he or she is feeling well and in good form on that day. The ICE Report places responsibility and potential for curriculum development much more in the hands of the practical experts on the ground, the teachers, and I agree with that.

The last subject on which I want to touch — it is a subject that is very important to me — is the question which Senator Cranitch spoke on, perhaps too fleetingly, in his speech. It is the whole question of civics. Civics is a boring name, it is a boring subject and it has boring associations. Civics has been done to death in the school system. It is done in the junior cycle only, 30 minutes per week in most cases. It has to be time-tabled but everybody in the teaching profession and in schools knows very well that the timetable slot is often used for cramming for other subjects.

The whole question of political education needs to be brought into the forefront of the educational system. In a country like Ireland where we have such an enormous young population, to leave them out of school in such crass ignorance of how the country actually works and how valuable their own role in the working of the country is, is criminal negligence and has been greatly neglected by educators. Democracy here and in many other countries is extremely fragile. It depends on the consent of the people. Young people in Ireland, if they give their consent at all give it in blind ignorance. Political education in the widest possible sense in schools has to be fully legitimised. It has to be made a living and a growing process. We can see groups of young people around Leinster House following their constituency TDs, the high point of which for them is obviously the orange juice in the restaurant afterwards and the chocolate biscuit — that is about the sum total of most children's political education. The abysmal ignorance of young people in secondary schools that I know of about politics is appalling and what is more, the young want to know. They resent coming out of school and not understanding what they are reading about in the paper and not knowing the ins and outs of the political system.

They should be allowed and encouraged to study and compare political systems and political ideologies worldwide. They should study the growth and the history of political parties not only at home but in all countries where there would be some interest and relevance to the Irish system. They should be involved in the machinery which allows people to make a political input in the country. They should know how local government works; they should know how the finances of the country work; they should be introduced in a meaningful manner to the Dáil and Seanad structures, to the election systems. We should throw open this House and the other House to TV and radio which is the modern media understood by young people. We should all be meeting young people in their classrooms throughout the country and current affairs and political journalists should be part of that educational system. I would term the whole process of what I am talking about as education for citizenship which is essential in this young country of ours.

I brought this subject up once before in a Seanad debate and a fellow Senator who is no longer with us, I am sorry to say, described what I was talking about as a "Mickey Mouse" subject. His actual words were: "We do not want to add another ‘Mickey Mouse' subject to the curriculum". If our political institutions are described as a "Mickey Mouse subject" they will be full of "Mickey Mice" and "Mini Mice". I am grateful to the Minister for introducing this subject to us and giving us an opportunity to have an input at this early stage into his planning. We could not talk about anything more important in this House at present. We are talking about releasing the potential of future generations. I do not think we are releasing that potential now. We all realise that we are not doing that and that we have to find a new way. I wish the Minister every success with the scheme he has undertaken.

I welcome the opportunity to debate the whole subject of education. While not agreeing fully with the terms of the motion, which states that we welcome the intention of the Minister for Education to set up an independent curriculum and examination board, I welcome the opportunity to discuss his intention. I listened with great care last week to the Minister and I have studied it since. I find it, with respect to the Minister, large on generalities and somewhat short on specifics. However, I welcome the opportunity to speak in general on education. Often, indeed, it is the person who is the practitioner of the art who is not the person to talk on a particular subject. We have all heard of the shoe-maker's children who did not have shoes. I had better declare myself initially. I am a teacher and I am a parent as well but I do not think that because I am a teacher I have any more legitimate right to talk in this debate. Education is something which concerns everybody, parents, caring adults or children. Everybody in some way is touched by the education system and that is why this debate is of such tremendous importance.

The Minister in his speech last week made a point that he saw the need for the setting up of another leaving certificate which would be called the national matriculation. He put this out to see what would be the response to it. I have thought about this since and I would, with respect, say to the Minister that whilst it may appear a good idea it may, in fact, be adding more stress to the post-primary student who would then find himself or herself with two leaving certificate examinations to contend with. They would have to do the leaving certificate and then the national matriculation. That would be a cause of increased stress rather than a diminished one.

I welcome what the Minister said and I pay tribute to his good intention, to reduce stress and tension coming up to examination time, something which is of paramount importance. Some young people seem able to cope with this event in their lives and other young people not as readily. There is such tremendous media coverage of stress itself that I wonder if it is engendering some of it. I welcome the Minister's intentions in that respect. I should like to take up some of the points of his speech, and comment on them. The first one is on the schools transition year, the year between the primary school and the second level. The recommendations of the report on this subject, which I believe came out in June 1981, will be very valuable, providing, as they do, for a link between the teaching units at the top level of a primary school and the junior cycle of a secondary school.

Young people leave the child-centred primary education which thankfully Irish primary education is now, and I am glad to see it, and move into what is a much more formalised structure at second level. The difficulties encountered at that level have not been investigated, enough thought out or acted upon. I have had experience of dealing with a large class in a first year in a secondary school and I know that one finds oneself facing bewildered pupils. They are children really, that is all, because they are 12 or 13 and they have left a cosy intimate atmosphere with perhaps four or five around a table and the teacher moving from group to group as in a primary school and move into a gruelling day-long time-table of bells every 40 minutes, of hurry along now, move along the corridor, on to the next subject, a new teacher every 40 minutes and strange sounding terminology in science and various other subjects. They are bewildered and a lot of them are faced at that time with a long journey to school, particularly boys and girls in country areas. They also face a long journey home in the evening, and it is emotionally a very traumatic time for them. Facing them at ten past nine in the morning I have felt great sympathy with them and I have thought of my own sons in the same situation and hoped that, perhaps, they met with similar sympathy too. I stress that I would like the Minister to pay great attention to this aspect. It is one I feel very strongly about, having had experience of it. There is need for a more comprehensive and sympathetic look at the transition year and a greater link between the teaching units of a primary school at the top level and the junior cycle of a second level.

Senator Hussey spoke of the importance of politics in second-level education, something which I mentioned many times before at local authority and debating level in general. I could not agree more. The subject of politics should be introduced into second level schools. I suggest to the Minister that it could be introduced by linking it with history in some way at senior level. Under the history syllabus as set out now at senior level a student can take the modern period 1850 to 1950 or the middle period. Most schools from a matter of interest opt for the latter because they find it more relevant to events of today as they were shaped not so long ago. The subject of politics, not in a narrow partisan sense but in a comparable European sense, could be introduced as part of the subject of history at that level. I suggest that we start with our own country, the discussion and the theory of politics as it is practised here, and then broaden it to Europe, naturally, as we are a member of the EEC, and, finally, broaden it to the world level. In that way young people will see that the democracy we have in Ireland is akin in many ways to democracies in other countries. They will see the advantages and disadvantages of our system. They will find what makes us tick and what makes other countries tick over in the political sense.

I am always amazed to see young people coming out of schools with a string of A's and B's and various other letters to their credit, fine intelligent young people, yet the subject of politics leaves them quite cold. It should be introduced in this way. Let me give a plug here to what is my own subject, history. It should not be, when it comes to senior level, one of those subjects which is invariably a choice subject with another subject: history or biology, history or music, history or art, or something like that. History is so important to everybody's life and to their understanding of what is going on today because as I have said before we did not first appear today, we are all the sum of what happened in the past. History should be one of the core subjects at senior level. I would make a plea for that.

As it is 1981 and the year of the disabled I would like to welcome the combined teachers' unions' production last week of the handbook for education for the disabled. It is their contribution to the year of the disabled. I was very glad to see them coming together in this very productive way. Special attention should be paid to the provision of education for disabled people. In particular they could be more and more integrated into the normal system. That would be the very best way for all education if it could happen. The disabled must never feel different, because they are not; they must be part of the system as it is.

The question of school transport was not mentioned by the Minister but there was reference to it some weeks earlier in some of the media, and I would like to refer to it. I am not saying the Minister has bad thoughts about school transport, but if he is beginning to have bad thoughts about school transport for second level education I would say to him "hands off", to quote somebody else. It has given us a unique advantage here in Ireland in that we have a very well educated youth. School transport is important, particularly in the rural areas and should not be touched. It should be left as it is.

The importance of remedial education cannot be over-emphasised. I am talking of second level. Great strides have been made at primary level in remedial education. But much remains to be done at second level, particularly with regard to the child who is not particularly slow but perhaps lags behind the mainstream of the class. I would like to see more remedial teachers provided at second level. It would make a great difference to the eventual outcome of the value of those particular children.

The Minister mentioned one point which I would like to take issue with. It was that he thought there might be perhaps a different syllabus set up for the urban and the rural type of schools. There are environmental disparities which would lead to a need for some sort of a different emphasis on a particular subject. But I would not think that there should be a different curriculum. Surely the urban/rural disparity is wide enough without emphasising it.

The Minister also mentioned the PEEP Report, the public examinations evaluation project. I have been studying that report as much as I could. It is a very large volume. I would not pretend I have got through it all. But I have looked at the areas which have interested me and have found them very worthwhile. I was particularly interested in my own subject and in the mathematics evaluation which was carried out by many of the schools. Again on a partisan note, I was glad to see that out of all the schools which participated, six Athlone schools participated in the evaluation on mathematics, including my own school. That is proof, if proof were needed, that Athlone is the centre of education in Ireland.

The emphasis on remedial education is very important. Practical subjects are important. I do not know what one should call it. Senator Hussey decried the name "civics" and yet, quite rightly she went on to emphasise the importance of the subject. I do not have any bias against the word "civics" because whether one calls it "citizenship" or "civics" or "preparation for life" or whatever, there is a need for such a subject. I know why it has never gained any importance. Senator Hussey is quite right when she says it is 30 minutes in the junior cycle and coming up to examinations the teacher comes in and says "Now, girls take out the history books today", or "take our the French books today" and civics gets a back seat. It gets a back seat because it is not an examination subject. That is the way of it. We are working to a target and the target is the examination, on which more and more emphasis is placed. Civics, or whatever title would be put on this subject, should be given the status of examination and in that way it would have a validity and a legitimacy of its own.

I was very disappointed when this term came and I saw there was to be an enormous cut-back in the radio and television programmes for education. I read the reasons why. I listened to the Director of Education broadcasting on RTE when she spoke. I am still sorry and very disappointed, because it is something we used ourselves some years ago where I teach. The plays were put on and the poetry readings were put on. We all used the school television in fifth year for the leaving certificate. Great enjoyment and skills were gained by it. The Minister could well give his attention to the possibility of a re-introduction of educational broadcasting.

I would also like to put in a plug for the hoped for oral tests in modern languages in the years to come. It is something which is very important in education. One can be so competent on paper or in reading a particular language but when one goes to speak it, the skills are not there. That can only come about if there is an oral examination.

The subject of education is of huge importance to Ireland particularly where we have such an enormous young population. It is something one cannot quantify. There is no productivity rate. There are no net figures at the end of it all of profit or loss or anything like that, because it is hard to quantify. But it is an enormous investment in our youth for the years ahead. I would urge through this forum here that there should not be one penny cut-back in this vital sector. Money spent on education is money that will realise its potential and its worth in the years ahead. We are very lucky in Ireland that we have a system which, in the main, has kept the main principles of Christian life. It has kept the main principles of education to the fore. I very much welcome the increase in the practical subjects of education, but here I would like to pay tribute to the schools/industry link which was set up when Deputy Gene Fitzgerald was Minister for Labour. Athlone was chosen as the pilot project and — I do seem to be blowing my own trumpet here — our own school was involved in it under the aegis of the National Manpower Service in Athlone. I refer to the schools/industry link under the Department of Labour. Under that scheme industrialists, teachers and pupils came together to see if there could be some marrying of what was the real world after school and the world of school itself. The pilot project was very successful. It was most ably handled by the Athlone area of the National Manpower Service and I am sure in other project areas also. I would like to see funding going to this, and industries getting more involved, because they are the people who are telling us each day that they will be short of so many technicians in this or that area this year. They have made a great input already into this aspect of education and I should like to see it continuing.

I have welcomed contributing to this debate. The Minister's speech lacked specifics, but when he states his intentions more clearly, I will welcome the opportunity to discuss them further.

I congratulate the Minister for placing this document before us. It is worthy of the greatest consideration by anyone who has any interest in education. I should like to congratulate him too for increasing the grants and scholarships for the regional colleges and universities, because it has made a tremendous difference, even this year. In Athlone Regional College alone we have over 100 more pupils this year and they are nearly all grant-aided, because the income limits were increased to such an extent that seven-eights of the people are covered by it.

Universities are overcrowded, especially in arts subjects. I was on a board some time ago where a teacher was appointed to teach English and history. There were 104 applicants for one vacancy. There are a number of people at present with university degrees and there are no jobs for them. Some of them take logic, English, history, politics and various other subjects. Where can you appoint a teacher whose subjects are English and politics, Irish and politics, or archaeology? There should be job opportunities for people who have gone to such expense in universities.

The Minister invited criticism or suggestions on examination systems. There are always criticisms of the examination system. He points out the weaknesses of the examination system and wonders if the idea of continuous assessment of pupils is a good one. The starting point should surely be the correct placement of a pupil. To achieve this, an in depth study should be made into the abilities of the child at primary level. After all, a child is constantly in contact with his primary teachers. Senator O'Rourke said there are different teachers approximately every 40 minutes in secondary schools. The child, therefore, is better known to his primary teachers. The problem lies not with the examination system, but with the approach to the method of preparation. At primary level, teachers work within a given, fairly flexible, framework. This incorporates rural-urban influences, but the most important aspect is that the programme is child-orientated. The actual information being imparted starts with the experience of the child.

The secondary school situation is more of a third-level type, without benefit of a transition period. Failure at examinations indicates lack of understanding on the part of the pupils. This could be because secondary teachers have not benefited from training in actual teaching methods as do primary teachers. When teachers come from universities into the vocational system, they only require one qualification to become permanent, the CTG. The CTG consists of an oral and a written examination in Irish. That is the only experience they have. They have no experience in teaching, and it is wrong that there is no training period for teachers. It does not apply to secondary teachers. They do a higher diploma and get a certain amount of practical teaching, but it does not apply to vocational teachers.

The course prescribed for the leaving certificate is too wide to be properly dealt with in two years, especially in higher levels. It might be worth investigating the value of allowing a further year for the leaving certificate. The Minister has made a suggestion in that document that a national matriculation examination, independent of the leaving certificate, should take place a year after the leaving certificate. If that could not be done, there should be two years' preparation for the intermediate certificate, and three years' preparation for the leaving certificate. Some children get eight or nine honours in the intermediate certificate but when they do the leaving certificate they barely pass it. The intermediate certificate is no indication that a child will do well in the leaving certificate.

What would be the reason for setting up this board? It should be to review training methods and to monitor changes in employment trends and apply that to the curriculum. People go to schools, universities and regional colleges to train for a job. We must watch trends and change the curriculum. The Minister also stated that what suited an urban area might not suit a rural area. That is something worth considering too.

While teaching at primary level for years I knew the slow readers who were moving out of the school, as does every primary teacher. Unfortunately, this information dies with the transfer of the pupil to a secondary school. There was a time when confidential documents were sent to principals of secondary schools, but these documents turned out not to be confidential. Teachers are refusing to fill up these documents because they are not kept confidential. It would seem to be a matter of communication from one level to another, or from one school to another. It might be worth investigating the value of a further year for leaving certificate, and a matriculation examination could fulfil that condition.

The Minister asked for suggestions as to the composition of the board. First of all, it could not be independent of the Department. Inspectors would have to be represented and, probably, the INTO, the IBEA, the Secondary Teachers' Association, some of the universities, the FUE, the Congress of Trade Unions and, perhaps, farmers' organisations would have to be considered in the formation of a board. If a board is too big it will not do much work. Sub-committees would have to be formed to report back to the board at times and present their report to the Minister who would have the final say as to its value. I thank the Minister for putting this worthwhile document before us.

Fáiltím roimh an deis atá tugtha ag an Aire dúinn sa Teach seo an cheist thábhachtach seo a chur faoi chaibideal. I am not an educationalist and I can claim no particular expertise in educational matters. The reason for this modest disclaimer is that I have the honour of having been elected Chancellor of the National University of Ireland but in the few remarks I propose to make on some aspects of the Minister's wide-ranging statement I shall not be speaking in that capacity but purely on a personal basis. Even on that basis, I am not sure if I can be completely unbiased on the subject of examinations. Considering how much I have benefited from them personally it might be ungenerous if not unwise of me to criticise them severely. The Leader of the House did so. She suggested that they are largely an exercise in memory recall. I think many of us must remain forever thankful that we were fortunate enough to enjoy a fairly high degree of memory recall on certain occasions in the past.

Some forty thousand students now submit themselves for the leaving certificate examination. Less than half of these have any intention of proceeding further. Indeed, much less than half take up courses of study in universities or other third level institutions. The number who do so in universities and teachers' training colleges is, I think, only about 8,000 in other words only about one-fifth of all those who do the leaving certificate every year. It is, therefore, quite reasonable for the Minister for Education to query the suitability of the leaving certificate examination for the majority of the students who take it. He is right in suggesting that it is expected to serve too many purposes at once. It is clearly over-dominated as regards courses and syllabi by the subsidiary role it serves, that of being a basis for entry to third level education. One may remark that it does not even serve this role in a complete or unique way, judging by the many thousands of students who take matriculation examinations as well.

The Government programme contains the suggestion that a new examination, national matriculation examination, might be introduced to be taken one year after the leaving certificate by those wishing to proceed to degree courses; and that it be used as the competitive examination for entry to such courses. In principle, the idea of a national matriculation examination for university entry is a good one. Again, I am not speaking as a university Chancellor when I say this. The Minister's statement and the whole of this debate ought to be considered formally by the universities, amongst other interested parties, and their views made known to the Minister, as he has requested in his opening statement.

The universities, while quite willing to consider the matter at the Government's request, will probably wish to retain the autonomy on which their service to the community rests — the autonomy to decide what subjects and what standards are appropriate for entry to university, and particular faculties of university, just as they decide what courses and what standards are requisite for degrees. The wording used in the Government programme, and repeated by the Minister for Education, implies, I hope incorrectly, that the Government might themselves establish a national matriculation examination to which the universities would then have to conform.

It is one thing to think well in principle of the idea of a special examination for entry to university and another to judge how practical this idea is in today's circumstances of financial stringency. The Minister has given no indication of the financial implications of his proposal for a further year's schooling for matriculation students. Nowadays, I suggest no proposal involving a substantial addition to public expenditure can properly be considered except in the context of an estimate of its cost. Presumably additional accommodation and staff would be needed. Presumably, since we would be dealing with a proportion only of secondary school leavers but this proportion would be spread all over the country, there would be a special difficulty in making economic use of extra staff and accommodation. The question arises whether this extra year would be an essential requirement or would some bright pupils be allowed to skip it and do matriculation right away on having done leaving certificate. The Minister would need to elaborate on these points.

I must say that, on a broad view, there is much to be said for extracting greater national value from the enormous national asset of the second level education system. I have personally always felt attracted towards the O level and A level system, one that takes able students to quite a high standard in a number of selected subjects as well as enabling a respectable level of competence to be attained over a wide range of subjects.

I suggest it would be regrettable if, in a sort of humanitarian attempt to reduce pressure on students and allay the anxieties of parents, standards were to be lowered in a new leaving certificate which would be divorced of any university entrance function. We cannot afford as a nation to relax standards or abandon the pursuit of quality and excellence. Our aim must be to raise our school leaving standards which are not notably high by comparison with those in Northern Ireland, France or Germany. The Minister has tended to speak of the tensions created by examinations as if these were entirely bad. He spoke of the "grave, detrimental effect on the emotional and physical health of young people". Is this not going overboard somewhat? The examination system cannot be entirely dispensed with. The Minister himself envisages the new national matriculation examination as a competitive one. Competition and stress cannot be eliminated from real life. In many fields these pressures bring out the best in people. I would urge that, in reacting against unnecessary and undue stress, we do not get too soft and create conditions in childhood and adolescence which will make adult life an unbearable shock.

I do agree with the Minister that a search must continue to be made for reasonable but still objective methods of assessment to supplement or correct the conclusions drawn from examination performance. As to the purpose a curriculum should serve, I do not believe that what the Minister has called the liberal and utilitarian traditions in education are mutually exclusive or that we are forced to make narrow choices between preparing children for life, for work, for leisure or for living in a community. We must try to encompass all of these objectives.

In a debate of this kind it is possible to offer only general comments. I share the Minister's hope that the debate will lead to searching and mature examination by interested parties of all the issues he has raised and on that basis I welcome the motion.

Quite clearly it is necessary to keep school curricula under review in order to make them as relevant as possible to the needs of our changing society. Several committees have already done valuable work, for example, the committee to study the problems associated with the transfer from primary to post-primary schools which has been chaired by the distinguished Dr. Terry Raftery, and syllabus committees to study the content of individual subjects which have resulted in profound changes in syllabi over the years. A further example of valuable committee work is the technological syllabus sponsored by the National Board for Science and Technology, the Institution of Engineers in Ireland and the Royal Irish Academy designed inter alia, to increase technological awareness.

We must face up to innovation in education, but we must also acknowledge and realise that curriculum development is expensive. Funding of this development on a once-off basis or for short intervals is unsatisfactory. There is an obvious need for a long-term plan for curriculum development backed up by the will and the structures for the implementation of changes or entirely new programmes. Implementation is obviously as crucial as the need for curriculum development itself.

On the face of it, the proposal to establish an Independent Curriculum and Examination Board looks like a good idea. For my part I welcome the opportunity to make a brief contribution to the debate. I would like to refer, however, to the Curriculum Unit already in existence and operating in the Department of Education. I consider that it has a lot of potential if given adequate staffing and money together with the power to shift from its present monitoring role to contributing directly to curriculum development.

I share the Minister's concern about the growing pressure on young people, and their parents, from examinations. The scramble to secure university places aggravates an already pressurised situation. However, examinations like the leaving certificate fulfil very important functions. They ensure that standards are maintained and they act as an incentive to learning. The competitive pressure to secure higher points is not confined to university entrance. In fact pressure for individual achievement is characteristic of much of what goes on in the western democracies anyhow, and is a preparation for individual development to meet tensions that will undoubtedly be met in various walks of life as people grow older. Competition will continue to feature so long as the number of people seeking places is greater than the number of places available. This applies, for example, to civil service places, to places in teacher training colleges as well as to places in university and other third level institutions. There is the dual tension of the challenge of the curriculum and the standard of other candidates for the same examination.

Ideally the leaving certificate should be a qualifying test and a statement of attainment, but in practice it has been forced to become competitive and a predictor of future progress. I do not see the National Matriculation Examination outlined in the Minister's statement as a complete solution to the problem. It would continue and perhaps compound the preoccupation with securing high points with the associated pressures. The idea of a National Matriculation is, however, deserving of further study if only because the vast majority of leaving certificate holders never get to university.

The most serious criticism I would level at the points system for university entrance is that the achievement of a particular number of points by a student, in some cases at least, determines the choice of the university course pursued rather than the personal preference or choice of the student, This could eventually lead to misfits, especially in the professions.

The Minister envisages a role for the proposed Independent Board in looking at continuous assessment as a means of supplementing the examinations system. The once-off nature of examinations and the dependence on all going well on the given day are drawbacks to the present system. The idea of introducing continuous assessment at second level is deserving of investigation. It is true that problems of standardising scoring systems and the objectivity of teachers could arise. However, tests and internal examinations in schools, though not for credit towards the public examinations, are long established. These tests act as valuable measures of attainment, measures of progress and measures of ability. They serve as a useful technique for "qualification," for example, to test whether it is appropriate to go on to the next stage of a given subject. They also serve as a technique for evaluating teaching strategies and outcomes.

Given that internal school tests are so well established and that they serve such valuable functions, I feel that a system of continuous assessment with marks being allocated towards the public examinations should be looked at closely in the light of existing practice. The introduction of continuous assessment for credit would require expensive retraining programmes, and again we are back to the cost factor. It is vitally important that outside bodies, and especially employers, should have confidence in the reliability of the end product.

In his address the Minister referred to the Curriculum Centre in Shannon. The extremely valuable work of this unit has aroused international interest. The main thrust of their activity is community-based learning, drawing on local liaison groups. The programmes in the Shannon region concern the vital area of transition from school to work. I understand that the Curriculum Centre is funded until next year only and I hope, based on the valuable gains from this work in Shannon, that funds will be forthcoming for the continuation of this very promising experiment.

On the same theme of preparation for the transition from school to work, I think it is very important to include in the senior cycle a comprehensive orientation towards employment and an adequate factual grounding in my own specialism of industrial relations. I hope that the civics curricula will apply to all senior cycle students and I share the Minister's surprise that this is not the case at present. I hope that the civics course when offered at senior cycle level will include industrial relations affairs as an essential part of the course for those who will not be taking this subject for the leaving certificate.

Ba mhaith liom cuidiú leis an rún seo agus i dtosach báire ba mhaith liom comhghairdeas a dhéanamh leis an Aire as ucht na smaointe seo a chur os ár gcomhair ar an ócáid seo. Baineann siad le rud fíor-thábhachtach ar fad, is é sin oideachas an ghlúin óig atá ag teacht suas inár measc. Tá súil agam go mbeidh andíospóireacht faoi, ní hé amháin san halla seo ach ar fud na tíre go léir i measc na daoine a bhfuil suim acu in oideachas na leanaí. Ba mhaith liom freisin go mbeadh deis ag na hógánaigh féin, na lads óga na cailíní óga smaoineamh ar na tuairimí seo atá curtha os ár gcomhair, díospóireachtaí a bheith acu faoi agus léirmheas tuisceanach a chur ar fáil dúinn ar na tuairimí seo. Cuirim an cheist seo ar na Aire atá linn: cad mar gheall ar chomórtas náisiúnta a bheith ann i bhfoirm aiste ag iarraidh ar na leanaí caint faoi leas nó aimhleas an chórais oideachais atá againn faoi láthair?

In rising to support this motion I am happy to think that this very important subject of post-primary education dealing with the future of our young children can be discussed in an open and nonpolitical manner, recognising on the one hand the tremendous work that has been done down through the years in the field of education and on the other hand conscious of the fact that there is need for development, progress and improvement. This certainly cannot be pushed aside as untimely or of lesser importance than dealing with our grave economic problems.

There is very little point in aiming for a material Utopia unless we seek to have a happy, well-adjusted and caring society. In recognising the achievements of the past, tribute should be paid to the educationalists of the past who, without the aid of modern schools and modern visual aids, enkindled in us the love of learning and put before us the importance of learning and of achieving worthwhile careers. Whether we like it or not, those of us here this afternoon are heirs to that post-primary education and, unless we have a very poor opinion of ourselves, we will have to agree that in the main the system was successful. It would be fairer to say, however, that in its day it served us well but that it served too few well. With the advent of free education—not that it is really free—all our children were brought into the post-primary system, from the student who eventually went forth and achieved the highest academic career to the boy who dropped out after a year or two and returned to the farm or business, or the young girl who got tired of maths, who said goodbye to the hard grind, who got a job and eventually got married.

The present post primary system, while capable as in the past of producing academics and modern day technologists, does not prepare modern youth for the practical demands of living, especially in these times of pressure. It must be said in fairness to former teachers that many of them recognised the shortcomings in the post primary system. They went out of their way to help pupils after school hours in an effort to compensate for the shortcomings of the system. The development of pre-employment and career foundation courses and the third year experimental programme are evidence of the growing awareness of the need to provide a meaningful education.

In his speech last week the Minister stressed that we should question whether schools are sufficiently responsive towards meeting the problems of practical living. I agree that greater emphasis should be placed in the curriculum on practical training and on subjects such as woodwork, metalwork, art and crafts and technical drawing. In 1930 the Vocational Schools Act was passed. Can we not see now how relevant and farsighted were the people who introduced that legislation 50 years ago?

There is a tremendous need to broaden the curriculum and to make it practical so that it may assist people in their lives. Family life education is a subject of tremendous importance, and it should be included in some form in the leaving certificate programme, especially at a time when marriage and family life are under such strain and stress. There should be an extensive health programme incorporated in the form of a subject in the post-primary curriculum, to spell out the dangers to young people of drugs and the excessive use of alcohol. There are other areas that should be looked at by an independent board, such as the development of person-to-person skills, moral and religious development and preparation for the acceptance of adult responsibilities. All of these matters are attended to incidentally but they are not included in an overall programme in the leaving certificate.

There have been many comments today on the advantages and disadvantages of the leaving certificate examination. As a teacher and a parent I know of the pressure that is involved for students. The question of pressure can be considered in many ways. We can be soft about it or we can say it is a good preparation for life. I do not think it is fair to compare a growing youth with a mature adult, to say that as pressure is good for an adult of necessity it is good for a young person to undergo such trauma and pressure at an early stage. This is an area that must be looked at. I have known young people who have suffered breakdowns prior to examinations and I have known very frustrated and worried parents.

The leaving certificate, as it is presently constituted, is too highly competitive for the vast majority of pupils. We have heard today that fewer than half, probably nearer one-third, of post-primary students go on for third level education. Yet the standard is set for all, and all must take part in this test of endurance, as many people have called it, this test of cramming. I was very impressed with the contribution of Senator Cranitch and his comments regarding memorising at the primary school level. So far as the leaving certificate is concerned, the amount of cramming that has to be done is too much and this applies to the whole area of post primary education. For instance, very many pupils will not have the satisfaction in later years of remembering their learning with enjoyment poems, ballads or even literature. There is no enjoyment in the wholesale cramming that is a feature of modern post-primary education.

There is also the matter of the slow thinker and the fast thinker, the person with a good memory and the person with a bad memory. To be successful in the leaving certificate examination a student must be a fast thinker and have a good memory. Yet in daily living there are many people who are not fast thinkers and who have not a good memory but have been very successful in their careers. This rush to obtain high honours and university points is a bone of contention in the post-primary system.

Senator Whitaker questioned the effect of this pressure on the physical and emotional health of our children. I suppose he is right, because it is very hard to quantify it. Our mental homes have many mature adults and the numbers going into such institutions is increasing year by year. There must be some element of emotional effect in the pressure exerted at this stage in a child's life.

The name "Independent Curriculum and Examinations Board" has been questioned by the Leader of this House. Call it X, Y or Z, I do not care, but it has a job to do and there are problems to be faced. When the Minister implements that decision, he may see fit to give it a more appropriate name. It is essential that this board be set up to grapple with the problem, analyse the effects of the present day system, modify it if necessary and even substitute a new form of child assessment.

I would be very slow to eliminate the present-day post-primary education system, with all its warts, without being assured that a new system would have a better effect. With some modifications and with greater emphasis on this practical living aspect, the system could be improved. It will be difficult to have an independent body because the teachers, the Department of Education and the inspectorate will have to be involved. With these three groups the element of independence will wither. To compensate and really make it independent, I would agree with the suggestion that it should embrace future employers, other than State employers, who would be interested in this sphere. Such organisations as Muintir na Tíre and Macra na Feirme could have a great input into such a board. Third level students, through their students' councils, having gone through the system and still being educated, could also have a great input into finding a solution to the problems we are facing.

I read a report initiated by the last Minister concerning the problems associated with the transfer from the primary to the post-primary area. I am very interested in that report because at present there is not a continuous flow of education between the two systems. The primary system is child centred, an excellent system in its own right and the post-primary system is subject orientated. There is need for a levelling off of the two system so; that there will be a free flowing from one to the other.

I would like to read a passage from "Curriculum and Policy in Irish Post-Primary Education" by D. G. Mulcahy. I saw it in the Library last week. It has some wonderful ideas and criticisms of the present-day systems. One little paragraph appeals to me because it spells out exactly what we are talking about. This is a quotation by the then assistant Secretary of the Department of Education — I do not know if he is still with us. I will read this paragraph because it is worth recording:

Except for the help he receives from religion instruction, the student's progress is based on trial and error. He receives little assistance from his former schooling towards his understanding of the problems of living with people and playing his part in the life of the community; yet, surely, education should put as much effort into preparing the student for adult living as it puts into preparing him for a job.

Would the Senator give the source of his quotation?

Page 101, "Curriculum and Policy in Irish Post-Primary Education" by D. G. Mulcahy.

I would like to welcome the Minister. This is a Chamber with which he is very familiar in a personal capacity, but I would like also to welcome the initiative he took in making this speech and in supporting the idea of a debate in the Seanad. Senator O'Rourke was a little critical about the speech. She said she thought it was somewhat too generalised. I suggest that this might be part of the merit of it, and I consider this may have been part of the Minister's intention in the way he framed his speech. Having suggested it is somewhat generalised, it covers such a wide area and deals with so many matters that it is difficult to respond to it coherently or comprehensively.

The first point we should make here is that examinations are a device for controlling the curriculum and, because they control the curriculum they control what goes on in education, whatever that happens to mean. Consequently, when we come to consider the question of an independent examination board and control of examinations, we are talking about the control of education. I do not mean control in a party political sense, although there is an element of that, but I am talking about control of what goes on in education.

Part of the problem that has occurred in the past when these topics were discussed was the role of the Department of Education. There will probably be very few teachers and educationalists who have involved themselves in discussions of this nature who have not at some time talked, possibly in a fit of anger or frustration, about what they call the dead hand of the Department. To a large extent this is understandable considering the way in which many of them may possibly have been looking for reform and changes which suited their own predictions and philosophy of education.

It is important, and it is relevant to our discussion, to remember that the Department, which has played a very important part in the life of our country, was to a certain extent torn between two basic roles. Its most important function from a practical point of view was to administer or assist in the administration of a very substantial part of the organisation of our national life with regard to examinations. This task has become greater and greater as the years have gone by and has imposed very substantial stresses and pressures upon the Department and the staff. We have expressed some sympathy for students who have had to endure examinations but it would be appropriate to refer to the pressures which have been on those who had to compose those examinations and administer them.

Another general point we must make is the need, which has been referred to by some Senators already, for education to reflect the needs of life. In that area there is a tension or conflict sometimes between the needs of the individual and of society. Much of the discourse on the subject of examinations and the curriculum reflects this tension between the needs of the individual and the philosophy which goes with that and the needs of society and the philosophy which reflects that and the practical aspects of that. I would like to dwell for a moment upon the need for an education and examination system to cater for the major economic, social and technological changes through which we are going and which will affect us to a larger extent in the years to come.

I welcome what the Minister has done in initiating this debate. In his speech he said:

The commitment of the Government towards educational development has been clearly demonstrated by their designation of education as one of a small number of priority areas for investment and development.

I began by saying that examinations are a device for controlling the curriculum and consequently the control of education to a large extent. Much of what we have said already, and what might be described as the background which has led to this debate, is the problem of downgrading subjects in which examinations are not held. These are considered not to be educational. Hence the classic phrase familiar to all teachers in the post primary area: "It is not on the course, Sir", or "Madam" as the case may be. If we consider the role of civics in schools and what has happened to it as a subject in the context of examinations, we may see one of the reasons why it has tended to be downgraded and to become a convenient means for headmasters and principals to deal with the problem of their teachers' hours.

As regards pressures, I should like to give vent to my own very strong feelings about this subject. Reference has been made to the growing competition for what is, in relation to our growing young population, a dwindling number of places in third level education. What is happening here, particularly in the area of guidance counselling which happens to be my own professional interest, is that our young people in the post primary system, and indeed in other parts of the educational system, find themselves on a moving belt which is travelling at a speed not determined by themselves. I know I am treading on controversial ground but it is a speed that is determined by the overall supremacy and hegemony of the birth certificate. One of the problems we have to face, particularly guidance counsellors, is the tendency of the system, of some teachers, of many parents and even of young people themselves, to think that, having reached a particular point on the scale as determined by one's birth certificate, necessarily one should have reached a certain level of achievement, a certain level of maturity and so forth. The consequence of this is that at all stages of the educational system there is a tendency for all those concerned in the progress of a young person through the system to mark them off constantly against certain very rigid and harsh bench marks, the bench marks of age, of whether somebody is in a particular year, or the relationship of that person in an administrative way to the various examinations. We are dealing with young people who are individuals and who are marked off from each other by a very wide and sophisticated range of individual differences. Because a particular individual young person has reached a certain point as measured by the administrative system, to assume that he has reached a particular level of achievement is one of the major sources of tension and pressure in the system.

I also take the point made by Senator Whitaker and other Senator that pressure of itself and a certain amount of tension — I would like to use the word "challenge"— is not necessarily a bad thing. Senator Byrne made the point that this pressure is one matter when it is deployed upon an adult, man or woman, and another thing when it is deployed on a young person who is as yet in the process of development and has possibly not learned how to cope with such pressure. I shall try to summarise what we are doing by saying that the system as it exists tends to shove young people through at a speed which is determined by the needs of the system, of society, of parents, of teachers and the needs of everybody but not those of the individual young person himself or herself. Having said that one must also agree that this is not a simple black-and-white matter. There is a tension in this, a tension or conflict between the needs of the individual and the needs of society, and in many cases the needs of both the individual and society are themselves valid and are valid objectively.

Much of modern thinking on educational philosophy tends to stress the individuality of the young person proceeding through education and tends to be exaggeratedly on the side of individual development, of the priority of the individual's needs and desires. Against that one must also make the point that even what the individual is is to a large extent determined by his or her environment, by the historical context and by all sorts of factors which are not, as it were, originating directly from the individual himself.

We must say also that there is a very important element of socialisation. This also bears upon the problem that is faced by society and by those people and institutions who are given the task of guiding society through difficult times of balancing the needs of personal development with the practical economic and technological needs of society.

In this respect I should like to make reference in passing to a certain tendency in public discussion on this particular topic in recent years — the discussion of what goes on in schools, of the subjects people do or do not study and their examinations, results and so forth. I may possibly be doing an injustice to the organisation concerned, but in my mind this attitude to which I wish to refer is identified with certain utterances by spokesmen of the Confederation of Irish Industry in which they seem to me as somebody reading the remarks as reported to have laid a great deal of emphasis upon the need to produce certain specific kinds of technican, of scientist and so on, as if this matter was quite simply a matter of a factory deciding to produce a certain number of a particular product. I know that in making that particular point what they are doing is articulating the need, which can be to a large extent measured, of the economy, of industry, of business over a number of years for a certain specific number of people skilled in particular areas. One of the aspects I would be nervous about in any reform that takes place of the examination system and of curriculum and of the balance of subjects within schools, is any tendency that might go too far towards regarding the school itself as a kind of economic factory which can be programmed to produce a certain specified number of people skilled in particular areas for a particular target year. There is reason to believe apart from anything else that this kind of approach has not been successful even from a practical point of view in other countries.

The Minister makes reference to the once-off character of the examination. A number of other points have been made by Senators about the unsatisfactory character of a form of assessment which relies too much upon the mood or state of a candidate at a particular time. Varying views have been expressed upon the desirability of examinations themselves, as to whether the whole idea of an examination is in fact good or bad. I would be inclined on the one hand to agree somewhat with Senator Cranitch and with Senator Whitaker when they suggest that there are certain positive things to be said about examinations, that they could in fact be pleasurable, at least for some people, that they provide a challenge and that they are not necessarily unsatisfactory methods of assessment.

I should also like to quote in this connection from a publication with which I am sure the Minister is already familiar and which is a very important publication with regard to the whole question of examinations in second level education. This book is Examining In Second Level Education by John Heywood and published as a service to education, but not necessarily reflecting their own views, by the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland, in Dublin, 1977. On page 13 of that book, Professor Heywood, writing about what examinations purport to test, makes the comment that it is exceptionally difficult to determine what is tested by examinations in the absence of clearly defined objectives, that Furneaux in 1962 in a study of the written papers set to mechanical engineering students at Imperial College, came to the conclusion that all the papers merely tested the same thing which he called “examination passing ability”. In other words, we cannot be sure when we are setting an examination that it is testing precisely what we think it might be testing. Consequently, a system based upon once-off examinations is likely to be unsatisfactory.

Senators have already spoken on the composition of the board that is proposed. Obviously the Minister will have to use his discretion on this. He said in his speech on the subject that for him to say that such-and-such a body should be in and such-and-such a body should not, would be to invite unfavourable comments from anybody whom inadvertently he had left out. Senator Hussey also referred to the need to allocate space in Phoenix Park for a meeting of any over-comprehensive board concocted in this way.

If the Minister and the Department are to proceed with this project they should aim as far as is practicable to establish a board who are genuinely independent and who have a preponderance of professional experts in their membership. Clearly there is a case to be made for moderating the influence of experts in almost every field but in a case like this basically what we need are people who know something about examinations, assessment and education in general and who can approach this in as professional a way as possible. A great deal of work has been done upon this, a great deal of research has been involved and this is worth doing in as efficient and professional a way as possible.

The inspectorate have found themselves in a very difficult position as a result of the development of education in this country and the development of the Department of Education, in that being basically professional rather than administrative in origin — that is to say in most cases recruited from the teaching profession or from educationists — they have often found themselves in fundamentally administrative situations and their talents and expertise and what they had to contribute to the educational system were often frustrated as a result. The establishment of this board, as the Minister suggests, possibly would lead to making better use of the very talented people in that area.

So far as teacher representation is concerned I appeal here to the teacher organisations, unions and other specialised bodies, to participate in this in a cooperative and constructive way. I say this in the light of my own experience as a proud member of a union, merely to note that there is a danger in this kind of situation where a reform is proposed, that the teachers'concern — and it applies not only in the teaching, profession but in many others — would concentrate too much upon the administrative consequences, the financial consequences and so on.

In passing I also warn the Minister that if he or the Department attempts to use this as a means of getting teachers to do a great deal of work for very little he may find himself in grave trouble. He probably does not need to be told that anyway, but I make it as a very serious point. This is an opportunity for everybody concerned to take — as the Minister has taken — an initiative, and I appeal to the teacher organisations to respond to this in as constructive a way as possible.

As far as representations from higher education are concerned, it is very evident, and the point has been made already, that as matters stand there is a lack of co-ordination between the post-primary sector and the third level sector. One could bring forward to that many examples of how the courses and the teaching, particularly the courses and the expectations of university teachers, are not aligned to what the students they are receiving have already done and are capable of doing. A great deal more co-ordination is needed here, not just in a general sense but particularly in the area of certain subjects.

Clearly, the parents should be involved. There should be an involvement of those economic and social interests, who have a direct concern with education. I would also like to agree with what the Minister implies, that whereas this must be independent as far as possible, whereas it must involve the various other people connected with education, ultimately for reasons due to the fact that it involves public funds, due to the whole concept of our idea of political responsibility, the Minister must have ultimate responsibility over what happens. This is the meaning of political responsibility.

He acts in this respect as the trustee of all of us.

As far as individual reforms are concerned I am glad that he has made reference to the ICE Report and to the work of PEEP and the Shannon unit. I would ask him, and the board when they are set up, to recognise the fact that we have in this country now a collection of people who have devoted many years of professional effort to the study of these examinations and of the curriculum in an Irish context. I hope that full use will be made of their talents and experience and that the Minister will adopt a very liberal view with regard to keeping these units going in the interim period. I note here also that the ICE Report was greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm but also with a fair amount of cynicism by people involved in education in that many of them predicted with a certain amount of validity that it would make its way on to a shelf and begin to gather dust. What the Minister has done, and I hope will continue to do, is to blow a certain amount of that dust off the report and bring it back to life. I am tempted to try to draw some kind of elaborate analogy between himself and Prince Charming but probably that would try the patience of the House too much.

Reference was made to a common intermediate and the basic essentials of education, an area which itself would be worthy of a full-scale debate. Part of the problem we have to deal with, and one of the reasons why there must be reform, is that what we would now consider to be the basic essentials of education would differ very widely from what would have been defined at the time the intermediate and leaving certificates were set up as we now know them, and obviously the intermediate system of 1878.

With regard to the intermediate certificate itself, reference has been made here already to the results of that examination. One is treading on delicate ground here in that a young person and his or her parents who are in a state of comparative euphoria subsequent to receiving the results of this year's intermediate, at long last, would possibly be hurt, annoyed or threatened by any suggestion that these results are of limited value. The experience of many teachers, including myself, would be that whereas the results of the intermediate tend to give some kind of measurement of the general ability of the young person, they are in many cases extremely damaging and unhelpful in that they give an inflated idea of what that person's ability is. If one looks through the results sheets of almost any post-primary school which has done the intermediate, one sees a whole row of As, Bs, Cs and so on. There is an immediate tendency to say honours, honours, honours and the young person and his or her parents tend to say so-and-so has got five Bs, and these are directly related to a future which must include something like medicine, law or engineering at a university. The intermediate has developed in such a way — and I do not know why — that these results for somebody proceeding on to the leaving certificate are a mockery, a snare and a delusion. Results of this kind mislead young people and their parents.

The feeling of many people on the staff of my own school was that they welcomed the late arrival of the intermediate results this year because it meant that when the young people concerned were trying to make up their minds about what they should do for the leaving certificate they did it without the benefit of the intermediate results. Consequently, in most cases what eventuated was a lot more realistic. This is an example of how the intermediate has tended to discredit itself with many teachers.

In this context I should point out to the Minister — as he may already know — that many schools have over the last few years begun to opt out of the intermediate certificate system and have put in alternatives of one kind or another, many of them doing the GCE "O" levels instead because they feel the intermediate no longer serves any useful purpose for them. Increasingly, as more and more people go on to the senior cycle the use of the intermediate as a means of entry to some job or some further course is being diminished.

In terms of the syllabus of the intermediate, in some subjects it is very unhelpful — an example of this is science. If young people do the science A syllabus to the intermediate, they will cover a certain smattering of science cover a rather wide area. If they do reasonably well in this subject in the intermediate they and their advisers will be tempted to suggest that this will qualify them to proceed further with the study of individual science subjects for the leaving certificate. Leaving aside the ability and aptitude of the pupil, one of the problems that immediately arises is that there is for example a vast difference between chemistry as it is studied for the science A syllabus in the intermediate and the initial and subsequent chemistry that is studied for the leaving certificate. Frequently, people who may have done reasonably well at science in the intermediate then proceed into the study of physics, chemistry, biology or whatever it happens to be, and find themselves confronted with a subject which is very much more intense and comprehensive and operating at a level which starts at a point a great distance away from where they left it in the intermediate just a few weeks before. This is a matter which requires urgent consideration.

The question of whether the leaving is suitable for all students is central to everything the Minister has suggested. In regard to it as a school leaving certificate and as an instrument for determining entry to third level, it is important to be clear about the two different functions we have been requiring of the leaving. It might help to label one of them as a retrospective function and the other as a predictive function. The leaving as a school leaving certificate basically is something looking backwards at the performance and the achievement of the young person up to that point. But we are asking this very same examination and this very same process also to make an accurate prediction, upon which a lot will depend as far as a person is concerned, as far as public funds are concerned, as far as private funds are concerned, about how that young person will perform in the future in courses which may be substantially different in content and will certainly be different in difficulty. Here one would like to suggest that in anything that replaces the leaving certificate we must provide for some system of assessment which measures the performance of the young person vis-à-vis the people in his group, vis-à-vis the people in his cohort or age group in the population at large.

Reference is made also in the Minister's speech to some of the points that some Senators have made to the question of the standard and acceptability of the leaving certificate. Here we are into an area which is extremely complex and which has exercised, for example, the energies and intellects of very large numbers of people, particularly in the Council of Europe context — possibly the best name for it is the French name, which is èquivêlance des diplômes— the whole question of the relative acceptability of examination certificates throughout the Council of Europe area and, of course, the OECD and the European Economic Community.

Here I would like to make a plea to the Minister that he look into the whole question of the acceptability of the leaving certificate in Britain. The problem here — a problem which I have encountered myself in a professional capacity — is that whereas it affects a relatively small number of people in the country and in the system it has become somewhat more of a problem in recent times given the mobility of population, given the tendency of people to start their education in Britain, come here, then go back to Britain and vice versa. As the matter stands in regard to the leaving certificate there is no uniform standard as far as British higher education institutions are concerned. The result of this is that, on the one hand, there is London University which refuses to recognise the leaving certificate in any shape or form and, on the other hand, there are many institutions which are quite happy to accept it. This makes for a very confused situation. It is something I would like the Minister to look into, because it is something which is a practical problem. Also it is not really satisfactory from a broader point of view, in that it does not reflect the feeling that many of us have who are involved in education, that the leaving certificate, with all its faults, is a course and examination of which we can be proud in any European context.

Briefly on one or two other individual points: mathematics in the leaving certificate. There is a problem as between higher and ordinary mathematics in the leaving certificate. There are people who feel that the pass or ordinary course falls between two stools and does not satisfy needs, that it is too difficult for too many people and does not satisfy a practical need. One suggestion that has been made here is that there should be the introduction of something that might be called "practical mathematics" or "commercial mathematics".

A great deal has been said on the subject of civics here already and I shall be repetitive on this point. I have been involved in the teaching of civics myself. It is saddening to a very large extent to realise that what has happened to civics has happened. It tends often to be given to teachers who do not really want to teach it, who have no particular interest in the subject, as such. It often seems to degenerate into a series of ten-week courses on the use of litter bins, which is really not quite what civics should be about, becoming profoundly boring to both pupils and teachers.

Religion as a subject in the leaving certificate has been mentioned, not in this debate, but in the last few years. There are very serious doubts about the advisability of introducing this as an examination subject. It is important, when considering this, that we distinguish between what might be called religious formation — which one hopes can be by no means an examination subject — and the study of religion or religions, which is a totally different matter, a very good area for academic study and one which would be interesting to a number of pupils.

Philosophy is another subject that has been mentioned. I should also like to put in a case here — and it may be in connection with the family relations, personal relations, type of subject which has been mentioned already — for psychology or some subject which has psychology within its ambit. I find from my personal experience — particularly with regard to young people considering what they might do when they leave the secondary school — that when students are asking and inquiring about psychology as a subject, what they are looking for is not really a topic of academic study but more something which is concerned with their personal development. I would suggest to the Minister that, as an interim measure prior to the establishment of this board and before it becomes the responsibility of the board, he would look into the possibility of having some subject like that which would encompass that area.

Practical subjects have been mentioned already. As far as probably all post-primary schools but certainly the secondary schools are concerned this constitutes a very serious problem in that as secondary schools try to move out of the strictly academic straitjacket in which they have found themselves, they come to the conclusion that they would like to put on what are called practical subjects, such as woodwork, machine work, metal work, or something like that work. Then they find that, having made that decision in principle they cannot get anybody to teach it and the whole project necessarily goes into abeyance. I welcome the assurance of the Minister that he is proceeding with this matter as best he can. It is not an easy matter, because obviously it carries on into the whole question of remuneration and so forth for the kind of people who might possess those qualifications in the present system. With regard to practical subjects there is a tendency in many secondary schools to regard these possibly as remedial subjects. To a certain extent this is true. I would suggest it is true that some young person who is having difficulty possibly with some of the academic subjects — and who may find himself excluded from the value system of the secondary school because of his lack of prowess in the academic subjects — can get an infusion of self-confidence as a result of some sort or success in practical subjects and that this then has a feedback into his or her whole approach to his or her education.

I would mention briefly the question of computer science and computer studies and allow myself a slight partisan comment in relation to one of the Minister's predecessors who is a man I respect greatly, Deputy Wilson, who some years ago—this was in 1978 I think — made the comment that he hoped and believed that computers would be in the schools before the end of the century. With respect I think he was ill-advised to make that speech in view of what was already happening in the schools, and happening very fast.

On the national matriculation examination, one of the problems that occurs is that if we are talking of universities we are talking of a very wide range of ability and aptitude that must be measured. We are talking of one examination that is to predict who will be the doctors, lawyers, engineers, pharmacists, vets and so on. I am talking about courses as they are measured in points at the present time at the upper level. I am also talking in terms of people who are doing Arts, the humanities courses, who often can get into university under their existing matriculation requirements. There will be a problem here with regard to that substantial range.

It is important, therefore, that the higher institutions involved—and we are talking here not only of universities but of regional technological colleges, the national institutes and the other third level bodies—will specify what they need very accurately and intelligently. The idea of doing a further year's study towards this examination would have the merit in many cases of providing the student with the opportunity to gain added maturity. In this context I would like to make a reference to the Central Applications Office—a much maligned institution which works extremely hard and does by and large an extremely good job, although you do not say that to many parents round about September or early October: they are inclined to be somewhat vituperative about an organisation which does its best in very difficult circumstances. What I would ask the Minister is that through his contacts with that organisation and with the universities he would explore with them the possibility of having a system of advanced offers or provisional offers or preliminary offers as are provided by the equivalent organisation in Britain known as UCCA. I do not see why UCCA, which deals with some 90 institutions and with a population of 60 million, can manage to do this and we with a very much smaller population cannot do it. It would certainly make life a lot easier for people trying to make up their minds during their leaving certificate year.

Still on the national matriculation examination, it clearly will be quite different in emphasis from the traditional leaving certificate. It will be predictive. I would offer the suggestion that it will include what is called a general paper. I do not need to go into any further detail than that. It should provide possible opportunity for special subjects, that is, more individual subjects, an opportunity for research and project work, and though clearly there are administrative problems here, we should also consider the possibility of some kind of oral or viva voce type of proportion of it.

The Minister in his speech referred to competition and to the competitive element in this examination. Here we are coming into a major issue upon which, if tempted, I could speak for a further three or four hours. In this context, clearly we are evoking the distinguished head arising of Professor Dale Tussing and the suggestions that he has made about the supply and demand in higher education in this country in the years ahead. What we will have to ask here — we can do no more than ask now, particularly at this stage of the night — are two particular questions: who is entitled to higher education and who is currently excluded from higher education and might be excluded under any arrangements we might make?

I would merely say in answer to that that there is a case for saying that all those who could benefit from higher education have a right of some kind. Here, too, I would welcome very strongly indeed the measures which the Minister has taken with regard to improving the grants system for higher education. Again one of the things that we will have to confront in the years ahead is the whole question of student loans, whether we might move to a system in which higher education students will be paid a salary or wage. If we are to confront that issue we will also have to face the possibility that by so doing we might curtail independence, the right of dissent, the right of students to try to work things out for themselves.

The question as to who has the right to higher education raises the whole question as to who has the right to education at all. I liked in particular what Senator Cranitch said, that education is something that equips a man for living well. In this context I would like to quote a sentence from Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, published by New Haven: Yale University Press, Inc., 1943 in which he says: “The education of tomorrow must provide the common man with the means for his personal fulfilment.”

When we are talking about education here, we are talking about the democratic principle. We are talking about the right of the individual to self-advancement, to self-actualisation and to self-knowledge. But against that we are also talking about the social aspect of education and about the fact that the individual's educational process is the result of what might be described as a dialectic or inter-action between himself and the environment.

To begin summing up, I suggest that in all our considerations of education we should place the emphasis not so much on education and not so much on teaching but upon learning as an activity of the human being originated in the individual and proceeding towards an end determined by himself. In this context one can revert to what Pádráig Pearse had to say on this subject, on the very valuable comments which are still valid, which he made in his work The Murder Machine. Having mentioned the individual we must also take cognisance of the fact that the individual is to be found in the context of society. The society in which we live today is faced with changes which most of us, and many other policy forming institutions, have not yet confronted. In that context I should like to refer to a report of the National Board for Science and Technology, entitled “Telecommunications and Industrial Development”, published in Dublin in 1980. The majority of that report is concerned with the technicalities of telecommunications. In its preamble it states that for some time now sociologists and technological forecasters have been writing of a third technological revolution to follow the agricultural and industrial revolutions of earlier centuries. It stated that the new post-industrial society was preceived as a knowledge-based society or information-based society. I do not intend to proceed much further at this stage, but I should like to end with this thought: If what the people who have commented on this new technological revolution have said is true, if we are moving into an area based upon a telematic society, an informatic society, we are moving into an area——

It is necessary for me to interrupt the Senator at this time because the House has agreed that this debate would be adjourned at 7.45 p.m. Will the Senator move the adjournment?

I move the adjournment.

Debate adjourned.

When is it proposed to resume the debate?

It is proposed to resume the debate on next Thursday.

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