Alert eyes spotted at the end of last month that the reformed Senior Cycle timetable had quietly changed. The introduction of the new maths and English subjects has been moved from 2027 to “at least 2028”.
This was in the wake of particular controversy about the proposed reformed maths. Great credit must go to Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin, DCU associate professor of mathematics education, and Pauline Mellon, professor emeritus in the UCD School of Mathematics and Statistics. They resigned from the Leaving Cert maths redevelopment group because of what they characterised as an incoherent reform where both breadth and depth had been sacrificed.
Did the instruction to delay implementation come from the Minister for Education, Hildegarde Naughton? If so, perhaps she has sufficient courage to halt this whole flawed reform process. She has already demonstrated sufficient steel to secure one of the biggest raises ever in the capitation grant for primary schools even though colleagues were furious about the hole in Department of Education finances. That overspend came mostly from providing special classes for students with autism. Inclusive education is expensive.
Forcing a rethink on the Leaving Cert would make teachers feel heard. Teachers took strike action because they need a pay increase to keep pace with spiralling prices, but also because they are completely fed up with their legitimate concerns being ignored.
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At primary level, that looks like 1,251 mainstream classes with 30 or more pupils, crumbling buildings and inadequate support in mainstream classrooms for students with additional needs. It also stems from implementing new curricula, increased bureaucracy and the assumption that schools can cope with everything from junior infants who are not toilet-trained to the fallout from an increasingly fractured society.
At post-primary, teachers have not dissimilar concerns but also feel ignored – first in Junior Cycle and now in Senior Cycle reform. The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) will point to teacher representation on every development committee and to extensive consultation.
The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) has expressed concerns that instead there is an endemic lack of transparency and a “disregard for the views of group members when they dissented from an established NCCA position”.
The Leaving Cert has a good reputation internationally. We are in danger of trashing it.
The new additional assessment component (AAC) in maths is not a project, but a single-day controlled assessment taken towards the end of fifth year, under exam conditions. While that might seem better than an investigation open to abuse using AI, Foundation, Ordinary and Higher levels will all sit the same assessment. This makes no sense.
The AAC timetable for the reformed subjects during this current academic year neatly demonstrates the additional stress. The physics investigation deadline is in early December, biology in February, business in March and chemistry is in April. Some schools have Christmas exams for sixth years, virtually all have mocks in February and language orals still take place in the Easter holidays in March, followed by final exams in June. Students will be exhausted. And that is before they have AACs in all subjects. Many subjects currently have projects but a mandatory mark of at least 40 per cent for the AACs generates stratospheric stress.
[ Why I walked away from the Leaving Cert maths reform groupOpens in new window ]
The science subjects introduced in 2025 were promised a pilot scheme for lab technicians starting in September 2026. Somewhere in the process, it changed to lab support assistants. A lab technician qualification currently requires a two-year diploma but there are rumours that a Level 5 qualification, equivalent to the Leaving Cert, will suffice for a lab support assistant. Health and safety risks are enormous for science students in a lab where eight people will carry out individual investigations at the same time. Lab technicians would have provided an important safeguard but currently, only a minority of schools – mostly private – have them. There is no word of when the pilot scheme will commence. Health and safety training for teachers will eventually be provided by Oide, the department support service for teachers and school leaders, which simply does not have the expertise.
Other subjects are in disarray. Coiste Oideachais of Conradh na Gaeilge, representing all the Irish language groups, asked that the new Senior Cycle Gaeilge should conform to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), which is an international standard to describe language ability and fluency. Astonishingly, the NCCA said conformity with CEFR would take five to 10 years but is currently sticking to introducing their version of reformed Gaeilge in 2028.
Accounting has been paused because of problems establishing what software to use for the AAC. The proposed English oral is proving impossible to implement. Even the new drama, theatre and film studies course is running into trouble, with its AAC worth 50 per cent, because of uncertainty about the balance of marks for a digital journal and a two-minute recording of performance. Currently, all AACs in every subject are marked as high, moderate or low but no one knows how that translates to grades.
It is barely credible that rapid reviews are promised in September after the first examinations, which is far too late for the poor guinea pig students. No wonder teachers are fleeing to Australia. Naughton must shout stop.
