Rose Conway-Walsh: Leaving Cert pressures and the digital divide

Thank you very much, Cathaoirleach and thank you all for your presentations. Just on Tony's point there, it's something that concerns me as well in terms of the love of learning and the importance of the love of learning at that stage and the fact that the pressures of the Leaving Cert and it was touched on in terms of well-being and I'm glad to see it there, that it can almost knock that out of people at that stage and that really does concern me because we also have to look at learning not just for the labour market, but in terms of our own self-actualization and as we go through life as well. So I suppose maybe the question to you, I have a couple of questions, maybe the question to you Tony is how can we do more to address that so that we really instill that love of learning into people. In the IBEC submission it talks about the need to bridge the divide between the schools in relation to access to technology and I want to ask in terms of the digitalisation of businesses. Obviously we hear time and time again that that is the way forward, it is so vitally important. So how much of a drag back is the fact that we don't have the digital skills that we need there at the moment? How much of a drag back on business is that? How concerned are you about it? And that's a question for everybody as well. And how long do we have in terms of our competitiveness there before we are left so far behind that we start to lose jobs and lose that competitiveness as well? And how important is the inequalities that are being created in terms of our connectivity, particularly in rural Ireland? And so where we have young people now trying to study and do their leave insert, we have situations where they have the national broadband plan and their, you know, your house will be got to in 2025 and 2026. How concerned are you about that? How concerned are you about the lack of computer science within the second level schools? And how can we address that? We have a huge inequality at the moment. We will have people sitting there leaving cert next year who have had to teach themselves computer science. While you have other areas, while you have other areas of the more affluent areas maybe, where you will have students there who will have got full tuition there. How can we hope to create a level playing field around that? In the inequality and the ESRI have spoken about this as well. The inequality in terms of the disadvantaged areas. We know that 5% of students from Trinity are from disadvantaged areas. Better off parts of the city in Dublin here such as Dublin 2, 4, 6 and 14 have progression rates of 90%. We have Dublin 10, 11, 17 and 24 with progression rates as low as 7%. What are we doing wrong there? What are we doing wrong there? We are really, really failing these people that will not only have an economic impact for society, but also a social impact there as well. I know there is a lot there, but maybe if you could just speak to a couple of those things to start with. Thanks. Who wants to come in first? Dr. Smith. Dr. Smith. Dr. Smith. Dr Smith. Thank you. I would like to briefly pick up on two issues that the Deputy raised. First is inequality. Our research has shown that all students really lose out from this mode of teaching and learning. But in particular it is those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds that disengage more, that are less responsive to an exam focused curriculum that does not take account of broader practical skills. So that's really an issue. And the distinction between ordinary and higher level subjects means in terms of points, means that young people who take ordinary, they feel even though they're working hard, they're not necessarily getting the reward for that and they can become disengaged. I was glad too, you brought up the broader love of learning because as well as pointing to gaps in relation to preparation for words of work and for adult life, young people that we've surveyed have repeatedly said that they don't feel their second level education is fostering that love of learning in terms of reading for pleasure, appreciating art and music, and even engaging in sports and physical exercise. So there are issues around producing that more rounded person who can go on to further develop their skills. Thank you. Mr. Donoghue. Mr. Donoghue. Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to respond to Deputy Conway Walsh's specific question around stimulating this love of learning. There is a cliche about education policy that no education system can exceed the quality of its teachers, and teachers are critical in this. I think we all instinctively know this and will remember probably at least one teacher from our childhood who inspired us in a particular way. So I think we should be relentless in the concentration on CPD for teachers. And that actually links into curriculum reform, because there's another cliche around education policy, that the assessment tail wags the curriculum dog. And if you have, as other contributors have already made the point, if you focus on a single method of assessment, it's quite logical then that the whole learning experience will be skewed in terms of meeting that. So I think that's already been well covered at this session and previous sessions, the importance of not having one method of assessment. So, and then my final point on this would be linking what happens to the classroom to real life. I mean, sometimes it feels like a parallel process, and I think that's how you excite and interest students. And indeed, in the way Dr Smith has outlined as well, having that well-rounded education experience. Okay, people like me make a living around the sort of more utilitarian skills required for an economy, but we actually, in the business world, are very conscious of needing to produce well-rounded individuals. Thank you. Okay, Deputy Walsh, there's about two minutes left in the slot. Just in the terms of the digital divide and the digitization and how much of a pullback that is, and how long have we got to be able to address that? Maybe if somebody, anybody would like to speak to that? Okay, I'll call on Dr Freeman. Actually, I hadn't put up my hand to address that point. I was going to address some of the others, so I don't know if it's okay to do that. You can do that, you can do both. Yeah, yeah. She'll address the digital piece. I mean, I think on the love of learning, I mean, we know that inquiry-based learning is what's critical there. Like teaching people to learn, that gives them the love of learning. And our evidence from our interventions with primary school teachers show that confidence is the biggest issue there. And echoing what Tony said, we need to focus on the teachers and we need to recognize those that are doing the CPD, particularly that CPD that's offered by other organizations outside of the formal Department of Education structures. I also think, as I said in my statement, we need to recognize the opportunities outside of the classroom, that real world learning. And again, we can integrate this cleverly into assessment modules that are evidence-based and can be objective. I mean, I think we need to be careful not to think about what we did during the pandemic as the best we can do in terms of continuous assessment. That was an emergency response and we have a lot of excellent research that we should lean on to show us how we can do that better. And I'll just briefly touch on computer science, because you mentioned that. I mean, we certainly would have concerns about computer science in schools. I mean, we see very, very low levels of girls still take computer science and we see very high dropout rates at universities. So, I mean, that is certainly a concern when it comes to, we've all agreed on the emphasis on digital skills. So, those are just a couple of points I wanted to make, but I'll hand out to Maeve. Thank you very much.