Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 3 March 2021
447. Deputy Neale Richmond asked the Minister for Education if she has considered using transition year to allow students to catch up on missed classes and lessons due to Covid-19 school closures; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [11465/21]
View answerMy Department has published guidelines in relation to the Transition Year, TY, programme and specific guidance for Transition Year in the context of Covid-19. This guidance was published as part of the return to school suite of guidance materials published in July 2020 to enable schools to mediate the curriculum safely for all pupils/students in a Covid-19 context. The guidance is available at www.gov.ie/backtoschool.
Transition Year is an optional programme. It is designed to act as a bridge between junior and senior cycle. It provides students with an opportunity to experience a wide range of educational activities, including work experience, over the course of a year that is free from formal examinations. The aim of TY is to educate students for maturity with an emphasis on personal development, social awareness and skills for life.
The TY guidelines and make it clear that TY should not form part of the Leaving Certificate Programme and should not be seen as an opportunity for spending three years rather than two studying Leaving Certificate material. The Returning to School Transition Year 2020/21 guidelines confirms that teachers are best placed to review all aspects of their current programmes and to adapt those programmes as necessary. Much of what is in existing TY programmes can be built on and, for the current school year, the main additional task involves establishing continuity with Junior Cycle and monitoring student re-engagement with learning so that skills could be built upon for further senior cycle learning.
The programme content for Transition Year, while not absolutely excluding Leaving Certificate material, should be chosen largely with a view to augmenting the Leaving Certificate experience, laying a solid foundation for Leaving Certificate studies, giving an orientation to the world of work and, in particular, catering for the students’ personal and social awareness/development.
The guidance issued in the Covid-19 context enables schools to plan for teaching, learning and assessment in a way that builds on and progresses students’ learning from junior cycle. Given the likelihood that the school closure period will have impacted on students’ learning in variable ways, schools, for the 2020/21 school year, can allocate additional time to teaching the core layer of the TY programme (Irish, English and Mathematics), with an emphasis on developing students’ literacy and numeracy skills.
