Laying the Foundations for Future Second Level Education in Ireland

I chaired a well attended meeting of the EGA Board in UCD on Monday night last. The highlight of the meeting was the presentation by Dr Anne Looney Chief Executive of the National Council of Curriculum and Assessment on the reform at Second Level.

Dr Anne Looney CEO National Council for Curriculum and Assessment

Anne gave us an update on Project Maths which is now practically implemented in full at Junior and Leaving Certificate level. It will however take years to embed fully in the Second Level curriculum. Anne advised us that the most difficult part of the Maths course is still Algebra. Vectors and Matrices have been dropped by Project Maths in favour of greater intensification in Statistics and Probability.

 

The new Junior Cycle Student Award (JCSA) will be a mixture of local assessment and national assessment which is radically different than the current Junior Cert. Even the local assessment though is centrally set and the schools have more discretion on the subject taught apart from the core subjects.

Programme for Roll-out of Project Maths

Another current deficit being addressed 'head on' is the transition from Primary to Second Level where in future the Primary term will end at Christmas in 6th class and an introduction to the new Junior Cycle will overlap with Primary for the period Christmas to June. This is a radical new transition designed to create a much more seamless transfer from 6th Class Primary to 1st Year Secondary.

Courtesy of mercymounthawk.ie

In the question and answer session there were some robust exchanges with Anne who is well able to defend her patch. Many of our Board Members were still in favour of the formal 'rigour' of set examinations. Anne confidently maintained that some of the adverse effects of moving from more formal assessment to greater freedom of choice and continuous assessment would not materialise.

 

I think that the NCCA is in good hands with Anne as CEO and their work is informed by the best educational minds we have. It’s exciting to witness the laying of new foundations for the education system to serve the new Ireland post recession and bailout. We owe a debt of gratitude to the work of the NCCA and to successive Ministers who have encouraged their work.

Key Skills for new Junior Cycle Student Award (JCSA)

The meeting was busy otherwise. We elected George Young (BE Elect 1974) Killian McKenna (BE Elect 2013) and UCD Careers Consultant Aisling Harkin to our Board. We selected Minister Pat Rabbitte TD to give the Annual Spring Lecture 2014 and we are honoured that he has kindly accepted our invitation – no date finalised yet. We will hold the Annual EGA Lunch in the National Concert Hall on Tuesday May 27th where we will present the 2014 Distinguished Graduate Award.

 

We agreed new criteria for the Distinguished Graduate Award. We reconfigured the distribution of EGA Gold Medals for those with best Grade Point Average (GPA) for the various ME and BE programmes and approved a new poster to advertise the Gold Medals in each of the UCD Schools of Engineering. This September on Conferring Day the EGA will present 8 Gold Medals for the various engineering disciplines.

 

Presentation of 2013 EGA Gold Medals (L–R) UCD Dean of Engineering Prof. Gerry Byrne,
Ian Kenny (Chem), Robert O'Donoghue (Mech), AndrasDankhazi (Arch), Claire Dunne (Biosystems),

Raymond Carley (Electronic), Eoghan Power (Civil), Conor O'Malley (Electrical), EGA President PJ Rudden.

Reacting to the low gender balance in UCD First Year Engineering of 15% female, we set up a Board Subcommittee chaired by Michael Loughnane to include David Timoney, Ann Fingleton, Louise McGuinness, Aisling Harkin and Killian McKenna to make recommendations to the EGA for future action in this area. We expect the Subcommittee on Gender Balance in Engineering to report later in the year.