I think we need to examine what exactly our school system should be for. At the moment it’s a springboard for third level education, which is fantastic for people like me who wanted to go to college and could use the school system to get the course I want, but not so great for people who either don’t want to go to college or want to wait a few years. With that in mind I think there should be more of an emphasis on life skills, which would be mandatory for everyone, including: comprehensive sex education from first-year onwards, classes on nutrition and basic coking, a proper politics/civics class, not CSPE for the Junior Cert, which is seen as a joke by a lot of students, CSPE should be reformed and should also be available at Leaving Cert level where students have to do a project comparing different types of governments in different countries. At least one foreign language should be compulsory. Bonus points for maths should be retained only for 3rd level courses where it would be advantageous- there is so reason why someone with honours maths should get a politics and English course over someone with honours English. Give bonus points for other subjects if they’re relevant to the third level course- ie. English for humanities subjects, French if you’re studying French at third-level.

Teach languages like they do in T.E.F.L. Courses. 14 years in school learning irish and a vast majority cannot speak it after leaving school.

Teach students the rudiments of English grammar. Then we might not have the widespread use of, for example, “I done” and “I seen”.

Add more practical subjects, we all leave school not knowing how to change a tyre or hang a painting, we should be thought how to be fully functioning adults by the time we’re leaving school at 18.

Review how career guidance is offered in schools and ensure that each school has a qualified Career Guidance Councillor.

Students choose subjects, upon completing their Junior Certificate, that will begin to dictate the path they take towards 3rd level. Some choose subjects that they like, some choose subjects that they think will make it easier to achieve a higher score in the Leaving Certificate. These small decisions all contribute to the range of options available to you when you enter 3rd level.

Following on from that, many 3rd level courses offer quite specific qualifications, which in turn narrows a student’s potential career choice. That’s a lot of pressure to place on the shoulders of a 15 year old who has just completed his/her Junior Certificate, or a 17/18 year old who is choosing a college course with little or no knowledge of, or experience in, the field he/she is aiming to work in.

There was a report released recently by a board of 3rd level professors who proposed the idea of more general areas of study upon entering 3rd level. This makes sense to me as it offers the student a wider range of options, and allows a greater wealth of experience.

I, myself, made a poor choice when I completed my leaving certificate. Given little or no help or guidance, and not properly researching where my choice would ultimately lead, I spent the next 4/5 years working towards a degree that I would end up having no real interest in, and 1 that didn’t move me that much closer to a profession. Poor planning on my part – the irony resting in the fact that I qualified as a ‘Planner’, of sorts.

Getting back to my point about Career Guidance Councillors in schools – I also think that a compulsory Career Guidance class should be introduced that would begin to introduce students to the range of professions out there, be they academic, trades…etc. This could be combined with a National Career’s Week where students could meet with professionals across a range of disciplines and hopefully ‘get a feel’ for what it would be like to work in their environment. This would have to be a government run initiative.

On a side note – @Elizabeth AhernFlynn commented above that at least 1 foreign language should be compulsory. I would add Science to that also, together with making Irish optional beyond Junior Certificate level.

I’d get rid of the junior and leaving certs. I’d have class sizes no more than 15. I’d have breakfast lunch and dinner available. I’d have pre-school and post-school extra-curricular elements on the same site. I’d have purpose build buildings with high levels of finish and surroundings. In short – I’d spend a fraction of what we’ve handed to bond-holders to get the best education system that the human race has ever achieved. I’d have modules rather than subjects and have required and optional modules. I’d certainly remove any hint of religion and other mumbo-jumbo. I’d teach citizens how the economy and the country works. I’d teach them that breaking public property means higher taxes. I’d give them a sense of ownership and pride in their country. I’d deliver happy, balanced and intelligent individuals by having a flexible system that, as far as possible, countered the effects of bad parenting and bad luck in a nurturing environment.

I’d have stringent evaluation and development of teachers. I’d re-assign or fire the bad ones.

I’d have immediate consequences for troublemakers – zero tolerance at all levels, but zero expulsions. The only way out of the system would be through the system. I’d have strong civic and community involvement. The education building would be the hub of the community and would be active from early morning to late at night.

The reality is that we’ll keep on with the one-size-fits-nobody system that we have at the moment. The system that tells more people that they didn’t measure up, than that they did. The system which is a memory test for getting into third level but does not prepare anyone for anything in particular.

Will anyone be brave enough to make the changes required?

Introduce continuous assessment

Change how Irish is taught so the emphasis is more on speaking rather then reading it. The younger kids learn a language that isn’t the one they speak at home then the easier it is for them to pick up other ones as they grow up. And considering that we plan to become a services lead economy, having a young population who are multilingual or have the potential to be would be a terrific advantage.

seperate the church and catholic ethos

Don’t get smart just copy Finland.

http://www.businessinsider.com/finland-education-school-2011-12?op=1

Well I’d set about abolishing the Junior Certificate in favour of a 6-year syllabus which includes continuous assessment across the 6 years.
A problem is that, with only 3 years to prepare for the Junior Cert, and then with only 2 to prepare for the Leaving, teachers are forced to teach for the purpose of exam completion as opposed to teaching students for the purpose of actual educational development.
The Junior Certificate simply doesn’t not carry the same meaning it did in times gone by when the number of students who left school at 15 or 16 was far higher. Obviously, this is still the case for some students and an alternate system would have to be run in tandem for those who don’t necessarily want or require a Leaving Certificate but, if the Leaving Certificate is to be the goal, why should the Junior Certificate, which carries absolutely no meaning whatsoever (spare me the excuse that it’s practice when there are already pre-exams and many schools now operate sit-down winter and/or summer examinations for all years), act as such a stone along the way?
Maybe I’m wrong but, to me at least, the Junior Cert just seems like relic, the original purpose of which no longer applies today, let alone the criminal amount of stress placed on 14- and 15-year-old children in pursuit of document which is worth less than the paper it’s printed on.

Everybody is so fast to suggest that dropping Irish and religion will result in a massive change in education. It won’t. Most teachers are now lay people who can barely find the time to teach the odd prayer or song because the curriculum is so overloaded. Most parents still want the children to make Communion and Confirmation. Personally I don’t have strong feelings eitherway about Irish or Religion but I think people need to open their eyes. Education is suffering for many reasons; the curriculum is growing each year, the no of special Ed students and foreign national students are increasing while supports are withdrawn. Teachers are expected to solve the obesity problem in Ireland. Teachers are constantly looking after children’s social and emotional needs, often flagging problems outside of school. I think in an age where the value placed on education is diminishing and social deprivation is increasing so much is expected of teachers. Most teachers love their job and genuinely care for the well being of their pupils. Social issues have a major part to play in our system.

Tactile learning methods are needed fast if we are to compete with the rest of Europe. I pity our teachers having to deliver the current curriculum to classes. Kids should be learning through interaction and regular assessment of assignments.

School books should also be available to download with free updates instead of the cosy cartel of Publishers ,Religious & Z list academics who seem to

No religion. More teaching on Law, Taxes and other useful information that people never seem to know much about but need almost every day of their life.

Driving theory and lessons?

More physical education
Better Sex Education – not by a priest or nun who gets embarrassed at the thought of the word sex
More practical subjects – with less emphasis on studying, remembering and regurgitation of the topic
Loose the books, get the iPad or other alternative
And so on …

learn the German national anthem as they now own us

@William Charles Thom. Sorry, mate you are a troll. You offer no arguments and posit the colossally ignorant statement that Irish hasn’t the complexity for modern communication. There are many issues I am not happy with regarding State Irish language policy, but seriously, either address the issue properly or bog off.

Make Irish voluntary for the Leaving Cert would be a start, might even help the language a those that take it would have a real interest in it!

Sort out the annual issue about school books.
If education is supposed to be free, then stop schools asking for ‘voluntary’ contributions – they should not be necessary
Set up a quality reliable safe school transport system

What does John Lonergan know about education?
What qualifications has he got?
He spent 40 years in the Prison Service 20 of that as Governor of Mountjoy
In Mountjoy he allowed the total degrading of prisoners by slopping out. The place was infested with rodents and filthy dirty and awash with drugs.
The first thing the new Governor did was address all these issues
Toilets are now been installed in all cells the place is spotless and he has addressed the drug problem

Get a class going on basic computing. Excel, word etc. These are vital in day to day office work and much more valuable than having to recite poetry in Irish that will be forgotten as soon as it’s not needed.

Some kind of class to teach people about citizenship.

Get the kids, especially the boys, out of their desks – boys learn better by doing, there must be some program of education where students have the chance to put the knowledge to work in a practical setting. Seeing them chained to their desks for 6 hours a day is crazy – they’ve loads of excess energy and a way should be found to burn it off either through daily PE or some activity that isn’t sedentary. That I think would go someway to balance the grades gap in a system that favours female students.

The best thing is to build more schools and hire more teachers, and we can pay for this by geting rid of the Army and all the couciliors.

I would make the studying of Irish more about the spoken Irish than grammar. I would have it as conversational irish until secondary school where students can choose whether or not they wish to study it to exam level.

Removing the concentration on Irish from primary schools would, if I had my way, give way for studies of another foreign language (also conversational) until secondary school where again students could choose to keep going with this language or not.

I know that there are many who are exempt from studying Irish and any foreign language due to learning difficulties. In these cases I think they should be offered a practical course such as cookery, woodwork or any subject that might make best use of their skills in other departments.

As mentioned by another poster I would remove the emphasis of the Leaving Cert as being the only reason for secondary school.

In an ideal world (well my ideal world at least) students would study for 5 years second level and obtain a Certificate based on continuous assesment throughout those 5 years for each of their chosen subjects. 6th year would then have them do a higher assesment in the subjects required for their chosen college courses.

The system of college applications would change to a similar one as in the US where students personally apply for each course and are assesed on their apptitude for the prospective profession as well as their academic qualifications.

Before all the haters start on at me for living in cuckoo land – I am saying what I would like to see not, unfortunately, what I think will ever happen!! :(

Irish should not be compulsory.

Charge to do some arts degrees and others without good job prospects, remove religion as a class altogether from schools, separate church and state , teach basic business and economics as a core subject, make Irish optional , reward independent thought over just parroting what the book says

Free education

Funding – How to get some Cash into the system.
Ridiculous that someone who pays private fees for second level education then gets free education at third level. Free third level fees for pupils qualifying through the second level state non fee paying schools only.
Also a 100 euro a month tax on people who wish to drive their children to school.

To try to narrow it down to a one solution fits all is also wrong.

What we must do and have so far failed to do in modern democratic nations is to teach our young people how to live not only how to work. To provide a system designed to get the very best out of individuals by helping them identify their chief goals and giving them the formuale to attain these goals. This may include study in Human Relations, Communication, Psychology as well as providing students with a practical philosophy for success in any path they decide to take. What’s more, there needs to be more real world application. Exercises and experience gained in schools and colleges need to match more the expectations of the professional world.

The appalling fact is that our education system as it now stands is completely unfit for purpose and causes a great deal of unnecessary suffering and stress to our children and young people. Most of them do not enjoy it – they simply endure it.

We have to ask ourselves: who is this education for? You would think the child or young person, wouldn’t you – for them to grow and develop, learn and for their self-realisation. However, it seems that one of the main effects of our current system is to create stress and unhappiness for many of our children and young people. Look at page 29 of this national study of youth mental health, that involved 14,000 young people in Ireland. School (not exams, that’s a separate category) is by far the main cause of stress in their lives – this is truly awful. http://www.headstrong.ie/sites/default/files/My%20World%20Survey%202012%20Online.pdf

Why are young people not being asked in their learning environment what they don’t like, what stresses them, why they are not learning – very often they can happily tell anybody who asks, but nobody is asking them. It is well documented that emotional safety and happiness and relationships between teachers and students are the most important factors that make it possible for children and young people to learn, along with engaging teaching and a system that takes into account multiple intelligences and ways of learning. Yet in too many of our schools young people are utterly bored by the way they are being taught, and battered by unfair and uneven disciplinary systems and some teachers who are still authoritarian and mean. They suffer real stress. At a time when we have one young person taking their own life through suicide every month in this country, and most of those between the ages of 15 and 18, this is simply not good enough. Shame on us. We badly need to create schools that are emotionally literate and where students are stimulated, engaged, happy, active learners in a safe, nurturing environment.

At the moment we also have an outdated education system based on the classical model that certainly does not serve the young learner, and does not even serve the needs of the industrialised society it was designed to create workers for. This wonderful ‘animate’ by education ‘guru’ Ken Robinson explains why this is not only a redundant approach, but an abuse of the wonderful talent and energy of our young people http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
Another video here by the same guy is a very funny and moving account of how our education systems kill creativity, which may be the most important skill our young people need both for a happy life and also for an ever-changing new job market. http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

And introduce civic based national service for those who don’t enter 3rd level or workforce

Religion should be optional also Irish. Enda Kenny said at some stage that he would make Irish optional but Gaeltacht organizations were upset so he did a u-turn.

CCTV in class rooms so teachers can be assessed properly, remove job for life and fire bad ones whilst reward the good as happens in normal world, the private sector who pay their salaries

Catholic church brainwashers and lies comes to mind I’m not in favour of religion being taught in schools

Scrap the leaving cert points system !

Remove religion. Restructure the school year. School hours should be longer and holidays during the summer 4 wks. The additional time should be used to expose children to all the world has to offer, mix of sports, music, drama, free play, art. The manner in which Irish is taught needs to change. If a child can be bilingual early in life, other languages come more easily.

Introduce physical ed, computers as junior/ leaving cert subjects n Irish optional after first year

At the moment we also have an outdated education system based on the classical model that certainly does not serve the young learner, and does not even serve the needs of the industrialised society it was designed to create workers for. This wonderful ‘animate’ by education ‘guru’ Ken Robinson explains why this is not only a redundant approach, but an abuse of the wonderful talent and energy of our young people http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
Another video here by the same guy is a very funny and moving account of how our education systems kill creativity, which may be the most important skill our young people need both for a happy life and also for an ever-changing new job market. http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Gah, the shame! Stupid phone typo, please read “or” not “our” in previous comment. Apologies, nothing worse than reading a comment with poor spelling in it!

Not much point in proposing changes in the curriculum because teachers can’t be fired and it’s not easy to retrain them to a competent level to teach something else, or even a new approach to the same subject.

Abolish Irish? What do you do with all the Irish language teachers? Retrain them to be very poor maths teachers?

Even in primary schools where teachers are not specialised, they can’t just be asked to teach something else they never taught and probably never learned. There is a fair amount of resistance to change among teachers. but it’s objectively hard to teach well something you barely know, or to change the methodology of your work from one day to the next.

I would like for example for maths to be divided into practical maths for everyday life (statistics, accounting, etc) and theoretical maths to be taught only to those who will study engineering or physics. But how do you get teachers to even know how to teach statistics instead of trigonometry?

We have to face the fact that the education system has a built-in resistance to change, and that is personified by the teachers’ skills – not mostly through their fault.

Woops meant to add

“gain the most financially!”

More discipline .Less holidays. And classes from 8 am to 5 pm .

Get rid of schoolbooks.
Lengthen the school day by lengthening class times.
Lengthen the school year.
A mix of continuous and terminal assessment with multiple assessment modes to suit learners.
Level the playing field between subjects – some are seen as an “easy A”.
Make options other than 3rd level more attractive.
Find a way to change attitudes so blindly aligned to unions.

Introduce the lean sigma methodology across the entire organisation. This would initiate a culture change, which is badly needed.

The appalling fact is that our education system as it now stands is completely unfit for purpose and causes a great deal of unnecessary suffering and stress to our children and young people. Most of them do not enjoy it – they simply endure it.

We have to ask ourselves: who is this education for? You would think the child or young person, wouldn’t you – for them to grow and develop, learn and for their self-realisation. However, it seems that one of the main effects of our current system is to create stress and unhappiness for many of our children and young people. Look at page 29 of this national study of youth mental health, that involved 14,000 young people in Ireland. School (not exams, that’s a separate category) is by far the main cause of stress in their lives – this is truly awful. http://www.headstrong.ie/sites/default/files/My%20World%20Survey%202012%20Online.pdf

Why are young people not being asked in their learning environment what they don’t like, what stresses them, why they are not learning – very often they can happily tell anybody who asks, but nobody is asking them. It is well documented that emotional safety and happiness and relationships between teachers and students are the most important factors that make it possible for children and young people to learn, along with engaging teaching and a system that takes into account multiple intelligences and ways of learning. Yet in too many of our schools young people are utterly bored by the way they are being taught, and battered by unfair and uneven disciplinary systems and some teachers who are still authoritarian and mean. They suffer real stress. At a time when we have one young person taking their own life through suicide every month in this country, and most of those between the ages of 15 and 18, this is simply not good enough. Shame on us. We badly need to create schools that are emotionally literate and where students are stimulated, engaged, happy, active learners in a safe, nurturing environment.

Make learning optional.

Quit with the foreign languages. Irish employers get a French man with French rather than a paddy with French anyhow. We are wasting huge amounts of time and money on this. Concentrate on sciences. Remove the need to have a foreign language for 3 rd level entry to all universities. It killing students real choices at LC level.

Have a clock in system for teachers, so that during school hours they are actually teaching the students. I had a geography teacher at secondary level who would walk into the classroom with a mug of coffee, collect his newspaper from his desk and leave the room. He wouldn’t acknowledge the class at all and we’d be left sitting there doing nothing for fifty minutes. And I know of a few other teachers who did similar to this.
There should be a better focus on politics and the economy, I haven’t a clue of either as CSPE was a poorly taught class.
As for languages, I think the trouble Paypal had hiring Irish people with a second language highlighted the problem here. We should learn to speak a language, not try to memorize all the grammar. I hated French in secondary school and it was because of the teacher, she would not let us speak AT ALL during class, the room was so silent even breathing felt loud! I had two conversations with the teacher prior to my oral LC exam, that’s a pisstake! How are we supposed to be prepared for an oral exam when we weren’t allowed speak in English our French in the classroom?! Now that I’m five years in college I feel I missed out on the benefit of having a second language and a good teacher to lay the foundations of it and I’m hoping to start from scratch and learn it all over again! Only this time I’ll focus more on the conversational side of things as opposed to the “slightly irregular verbs”!!

SYLLABUS:

- Make English optional after Junior Cert because it is a subject that doesn’t produce an industry except plays or drama. This would also improve quality as opposed to quantity. The Leaving Cert has too many subjects to be examined. This reduces the quality of the learning system unless they drop 2 subjects.

PAY:

Irish Lecturers earn €64 / hr. Reduce Lecturers pay by 30% like in Greece. Remove the golden handshakes during retirement. Cut the mad waste of money they are currently throwing at Universities on research projects that produce nothing.

WORK:
Make it compulsory to correct exams instead of giving 3 full months holidays. Abolish the Croke Park Agreement and use the Eurozone benchmarking system instead of the current domestic inflation based one.

Dont just thumbdown people …if you have any intelligence then say why. (or was it your schooling?)