New Leaving Cert science course to bring ‘huge inequity’

Cork secondary school principals have raised concerns that the new Leaving Cert science course will make for an uneven playing field between private schools and public schools.

An Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI)/RedC survey of school leaders reveals that schools will face significant logistical challenges when nine new or revised Leaving Cert subjects are introduced in September.

From September 2025 to 2029, new and revised Leaving Cert subject specifications will be introduced on a phased basis. Nine tranche 1 subjects will be introduced in September for fifth year students.

Half of all principals and deputy principals who participated in the survey agreed that their schools do not have a sufficient number of science labs for the changes to the biology, chemistry, and physics programmes and 44% believe their science labs are not well equipped.

The survey also showed that almost three-quarters of second-level school principals work more than 50 hours per week, and over a third work 56 or more hours.

“The new requirements are for a project worth 40% in each subject. That might sound good on the surface, to take pressure off the exam, but many schools feel their labs are insufficient to cope,” said Cork ASTI standing committee representative John Byrne.

“It’s going to make it a two-tier system. We’ve always prided ourselves in our very fair Leaving Cert, but some schools will be able to cope better than others with these new projects and that will lead to huge inequity.”

He said that concerns as to how teachers will authenticate that the work is their students’ own and not AI were also prevalent.

“That hasn’t been sufficiently addressed, but these changes are being accelerated anyway.”

He said the new subjects will bring more stress to principals.

“There is a general recruitment and retention problem within the teaching sector. People are burning out a lot earlier in their careers because of the increased workload, most of which is admin — nobody goes into teaching for admin.”

Aaron Wolfe, principal of Coláiste Éamann Rís in Turner’s Cross, said that workload impacts are a worry.

“Everything that comes out from the department seems to be ‘the principal can do this’, but there’s only so much that can be done, and assistant principal positions still haven’t been restored to what they were before austerity.

“People don’t want to become principals any more."