TRANSITION TIMES: It's 30 years since the idea of a 'transition year' was first mooted by a minister. Gerry Jeffers examines how the programme has developed

Thirty years ago this month, former minister for education Richard Burke announced the idea of a "transition year" at the Teachers' Union of Ireland annual conference in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin. He described it as "potentially the most important idea to emerge from my ministry".

Three decades of profound social change later, Burke's prescient words still resonate: "Because of the growing pressures on students for high grades and competitive success, educational systems are becoming, increasingly, academic tread-mills. Increasingly, too, because of these pressures the school is losing contact with life outside and the student has little or no opportunity to 'stand and stare', to discover the kind of person he is, the kind of society he will be living in."

Burke, a former teacher, knew at the time that there was no additional finance for it. As he saw it, its success would depend on teachers' imagination and commitment. Transition Year was, he said, "an opportunity for the teaching profession to actually engage in education in the strictest sense of that term".

The restructuring of the senior cycle that took place from 1994 presented all schools with the option of offering a six-year cycle. Transition Year became "mainstreamed". A fresh set of guidelines put the spotlight further on active approaches to teaching and learning. Student numbers leaped from over 8,000 in 1993 to over 21,000 a year later and grew during the 1990s.

The programme received a boost in the eyes of many in 1999 when research revealed that young people who followed Transition Year scored significantly higher Leaving Certificate points than those who didn't.

An ironic lift, perhaps, given Burke's original vision! Transition Year has also enabled a new partnership between schools and agencies outside formal education. Thousands of employers facilitate work experience. Agencies provide imaginative resources to support the Transition Year, many of which have been highlighted in The Irish Times.

Recently, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment proposed that not only should Transition Year continue as an option but that, by 2010, all senior cycle students will participate in at least one "Transition Unit" where skills in areas such as those related to work, community participation, enterprise, arts or ICT literacy might be developed.

Arguably the pressures on young people have intensified since 1974. Transition Year, with its unapologetic emphasis on personal and social development, has great potential for enriching young people's lives, as many thousands of former students and their parents can testify. Thirty years on, a spark of educational and political inspiration from a minister for education deserves recognition.

Gerry Jeffers is a lecturer in the education eepartment, NUI Maynooth and a former national co-ordinator of the Transition Year Curriculum Support Service