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——