Olwyn Enright
Ceist:238 Ms Enright asked the Minister for Education and Science his plans to lift the moratorium on teaching the new home economics and biology syllabus on 1 November 2002. [19240/02]
Written Answers. - State Examinations.
The leaving certificate home economics, general, syllabus has been in existence since the majority of teachers in the system began their careers. The leaving certificate home economics, social and scientific, syllabus was introduced in the 1970s. Clearly, there are changes in society and in education that warrant a change in syllabus at this stage.
The elements of the syllabi most in need of updating are in the area of food science and the legislation affecting food, resource management and social studies. Another change, much sought-after by teachers who found the old syllabi very difficult to cover in the time available, is the reduction of the two old syllabi to one, and the reduction of teaching-time to 180 hours. This has been achieved by a streamlining of content and by the introduction of a strong element of choice. Perhaps the most important change from the point of view of quality of learning and teaching is the new emphasis on practical work in the revised syllabus.
The current leaving certificate syllabus in biology was introduced in 1975 and examined for the first time in 1977. Since that time, there have been considerable changes in the knowledge and application of biology. Biotechnology, which is covered in the revised syllabus, is one of these changes. Our students need to be informed about genetic engineering, DNA profiling-fingerprinting and genetic screening which come under this heading. The current syllabus for leaving certificate biology has been found by teachers to be too long to teach in the time available. The revised syllabus, like the home economics syllabus, is designed to be covered in 180 hours class-contact time. This leaves 60 class periods available for teachers to work with students on non-prescriptive material.
It is clear from the above that if schools were to continue to teach material that is now outdated and to use methods that are no longer helpful to learning, students would be increasingly badly served by the teaching offered to them.
Inservice training for teachers of the revised leaving certificate home economics syllabus has been in place since September 2001. A seven-member support service has planned and delivered a programme which is offered to all teachers. To date, 80% of all teachers of leaving certificate home economics have attended round one of the programme which ran from October to November 2001. So far, about 8% have attended round two which is running at present and will continue up to 22 November 2002. This face-to-face delivery of inservice training was accompanied by the provision of teacher guidelines by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA, and by the publishing by the support service of a booklet containing comprehensive guidelines for teachers on the planning, implementation and recording of exemplar course work assignments.
In the case of leaving certificate biology, a 13-member support service has been designing inservice programmes and offering inservice to all teachers of the subject at leaving certificate level since September 2001. Approximately 60% of this cohort of teachers attended round one of the inservice programme which ran in October and November 2001 and 30% attended round two in March 2002. The programme of inservice training involving laboratory workshops has just been completed. It was attended by 30% of teachers of leaving certificate biology. In addition to this face-to-face delivery of inservice, a video that will greatly assist teachers in using the revised syllabus was produced in June 2002, by the support service. Guidelines were issued to all teachers by the NCCA in September 2002. A comprehensive website designed by the support service has proved very popular with teachers, with an average of 2,000 hits per week being recorded.
For these reasons I wish to confirm my previous announcement that the revised syllabi for leaving certificate home economics and biology will be examined in 2004.