It's decision time for third year students - some of them, that is. In many schools Transition Year is now compulsory. So does the year give students a chance to mature or does it merely disrupt studies? It's time to make your mind up. Louise Holden reports.
Between now and Easter, thousands of students and their parents will consider the Transition Year option. Almost half of all senior-cycle students now take the programme.
For students who are clearly not ready for the Leaving Certificate cycle, a year of self-reflection, career exploration and subject sampling makes perfect sense. Where students have handled the Junior Certificate confidently, however, some parents worry about interrupting their academic momentum. Students and parents have been known to clash on the issue. The best that warring factions can do is explore the Transition Year Programme, or TYP, for themselves.
Some high-profile detractors have levelled the accusation that Transition Year lures students into the world of work, blighting the Leaving Cert years. Paddy Purcell, director of the Institute of Engineers in Ireland, has expressed the concern that Transition Year students form a part-time work habit that spills over into the Leaving Cert cycle.
However, the available research tells a different story. In an NCCA survey published in 2000, Transition Year students outperformed their peers by an average of 40 points in the Leaving Cert. A more extensive ESRI report, to be published this year, is expected to substantiate those findings and to show that Transition Year students fare better in the key subjects, English and maths. The report, which is awaiting approval from the Minister for Education, has also tracked third-level dropout rates; Transition Year students are hanging in longer at third level than those who spend only five years in the senior cycle.
Over the last two years, education officials from Northern Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Manchester, Greece, Australia and Japan have visited Ireland to examine the TYP with an eye to introducing similar programmes in their own countries. As the National Transition Year Co-ordinator, Patsy Sweeney, puts it: "We have created something absolutely unique, which other nations now aspire to".
The aspirations of the TYP are nothing if not ambitious. The central objective of the programme is the promotion of "the personal, social, educational and vocational development of pupils to prepare them for their role as autonomous, participative and responsible members of society". Whether or not this objective is met depends on the commitment of every party to the process. Parents play a more important role in the student's success in Transition Year than at any other stage in the senior cycle. Successful "transition" is self-fulfilling - if the school, the student and the parents believe in it, it works.
The overall aims of the programme are as follows - the students are educated for maturity, and encouraged to examine their own strengths, to learn about working with others, and to shift the focus from their own world towards the community, the State and the globe. A range of activities, from social work to artistic production to development studies, gives students their first taste of work that is not designed to earn money or score points.
The second main aim of the TYP is the promotion of general, technical and academic skills with an emphasis on interdisciplinary and self-directed learning. For the first time, students are not led by the hand from one textbook to the next. They get a taste of research, a chance to choose their own projects and an opportunity to gather information in new ways. These are the skills that they will rely upon when they are cast into the choppy waters of university.
The third objective of the TYP is the one that has attracted a measure of controversy. As Department guidelines would have it, Transition Year offers "education through experience of adult and working life as a basis for personal development and maturity". This experience should come from unpaid, structured work placements, workshops with professionals from a range of sectors, visits to companies and trade fairs and involvement in mini-companies. However, because there is relatively little in the way of homework in Transition Year, many students take the opportunity to earn a little money through part-time work.
On the surface, this seems to fulfil the Department's objective of providing experience of the working world. In reality, the students rarely learn much from their menial jobs in the service industries. They do, however, learn to spend their earnings, and this financial freedom can be hard to relinquish in fifth year. Part-time workers are part-time students - the Leaving Certificate cycle is too intense to share the calendar with exhausting shiftwork.
The Transition Year programme should be viewed as a full-time programme and not a career break from schooling. It provides an unrepeatable opportunity for students to explore their world in an enlightened context. Individual student needs can be addressed and students are encouraged to identify and eliminate academic weaknesses that may have dogged them in the Junior Certificate cycle. Students who have made inappropriate subject choices have space to reconsider. Students who have never felt a sense of achievement in school can hit on their strengths in Transition Year and begin the Leaving Certificate cycle with new-found confidence.
The Irish education system is applauded worldwide, but there's no doubt that students take little practical learning away from the exam years. In Transition Year students might find themselves applying for a mortgage, seeking sponsorship for a school musical or lobbying local TDs for a new library. If you and your child decide that these life lessons are worth learning, take Transition Year, and take it seriously.
For further information on the TYR, visit www.transitionyear.ie or check out
Transition Times in The Irish Times
every Wednesday.
