Minister for Education Helen McEntee has confirmed she is pressing ahead with reforms to Senior Cycle education, despite a reiteration of concerns and calls for a delay from second level teacher trade unions.
Calling for a delay to curricular reforms that are due to be introduced from September, Teachers' Union of Ireland General Secretary Michael Gillespie said he did not believe schools were ready for the changes or that the reforms were properly resourced.
The reforms will see students complete assessment components which will be worth at least 40% of their final marks in all subjects.
They are due to be rolled out for a number of subjects, including science subjects for fifth year students, from this September.
At a conference in Croke Park on the reconfiguration of the Senior Cycle, school principals and deputy principals expressed both support for the changes but also concern, particularly around the potential impact of AI on students' work.
Ms McEntee said she wanted to ensure that teachers received training and were consulted, but she ruled out calls for a delay.
"There is still time" to address concerns, she said.
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The minister also gave some more detail on the rollout of free schoolbooks for all transition year and senior cycle students.
The extension of free schoolbooks to this last cohort of school students was announced in November as part of the Budget.
Ms McEntee said schools would be provided with an administration support grant to assist with roll-out and implementation and that guidelines would be issued to schools shortly.
Under the measure, schoolbooks, as well as core classroom resources such as journals, copybooks, dictionaries and calculators, will be provided for all students in non fee-charging post-primary schools.
There will be no need for parents or guardians to buy or rent these items, which will be the property of the school and must be returned at the end of the school year or at the end of Junior/Senior Cycle.
Some 400,000 students, enrolled in approximately 672 post-primary schools and over 80 special schools, will benefit.
Separately, the minister confirmed that she would be pressing ahead with the rollout of a nationwide survey of the parents of current and incoming primary school children to ascertain their views as to their preferred ethos for schools.
The surveys have been drawn up by the Department of Education and are also expected to include questions on single-sex and co-education as well as Irish language medium schooling.
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