Your Questions answered by Brian Mooney...

My daughter seems to have an aptitude for technology. I have noted with regret that this subject has not, as yet, been introduced for the Leaving Certificate. I am not sure when technology was introduced for the Junior Certificate, but it was several years ago. What is the reason for the delay and do you know when it will be introduced for Leaving Certificate students?

You are correct, there is not yet a technology curriculum offered in the Leaving Certificate, but the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) has, in fact, been developing a technology curriculum for some time now and is awaiting the approval of the Department of Education and Science (DES) before it can be introduced.

So why the delay in its introduction?

Technology has been hugely successful at Junior Certificate level, and the demand for its introduction at Leaving Certificate has been very high among technology teachers for years. The reason for its non-introduction is twofold.

First, very few schools have purpose-built technology laboratories. Oatlands College in Stillorgan, where I work as a guidance counsellor, is one of the few to have built a technology laboratory in recent years. If we cannot find the funds to build basic science labs in every school, when are we going to find the funding for technology labs? The second reason for the non-introduction of technology at Leaving Certificate level has been resistance, generated out of fear, on the part of teachers of technical drawing, construction studies and engineering studies, that a well-resourced technology curriculum will severely reduce the numbers of students taking their subjects.

To enable the process to move forward, the NCCA has developed a new curriculum for each of the four subjects outlined above, which would make each one highly attractive to students. You can view them on the NCCA website (www.ncca.ie).

The NCCA submitted all four for approval to the DES with a plan for a roll- out of funding. Because all four revised technological subjects require a major investment in both buildings and equipment, the cost of introducing them throughout the State will run into hundreds of millions of euro. For this reason, I am sorry to say that your daughter will be well established in her working life before the Leaving Certificate technology is eventually introduced.

I hope that the announcement by Minister Hanafin in the Budget Estimates that she is making provision to support curricular reforms in the technology subjects at second level is an indication that she has secured funding from Brian Cowen in the Department of Finance to begin implementing the roll-out of modern curriculums in the four technological subjects.

Given the increasing technological sophistication of employment opportunities for students who develop careers in these fields, it is essential that our Leaving Certificate students have hands-on experience of best modern practice in each of these fields of study.

The tremendous growth we have experienced economically through the Celtic Tiger years had its roots in the investment in free second-level education for all introduced by Donagh O'Malley in 1968. The only possibility of sustained employment in technology-based industries in Ireland over the next period of economic growth is through rapid movement up the value chain. The building blocks of such movement have to be based on the commitment to implement the NCCA proposals that are with the Minister for Education and to make the investment required to give our second-level students the best technological education possible.

We are already experiencing fierce competition from both India and China, which are developing their technological education systems at breakneck speed. Unlike in the other non-technology second-level subjects, where teachers have successfully educated generations of students to the highest international standards on the cheap with little more than talk and chalk, technological subjects must have the physical resources and equipment to enable the teacher to educate their students to the standards they are capable of achieving.