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Disadvantaged students will be most affected by the disastrous reform of the Senior Cycle
Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin did not resign lightly, but neither she nor Pauline Mellon could stand over the draft syllabus. Photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times, it is surprising how little attention the radical reform now under way is attracting.
Perhaps the resignation of two respected academics from the maths reform committee will prompt people to wake up. , DCU associate professor of mathematics education and Pauline Mellon, professor emeritus in the UCD School of Mathematics and Statistics, did not resign lightly. Neither could stand over the draft maths syllabus. Both hadIn her resignation letter, seen by The Irish Times, Mellon described the new specification as “significantly worse” than the current curriculum.
While she is open to reducing content in a coherent way that preserves the subject’s integrity, she is clear that both breadth and depth have been sacrificed. She says “more or less all of geometry, including all geometric proofs, much of trigonometry, mathematical induction, financial mathematics and complex numbers have been cut”, while other material has been diluted. Ní Shúilleabháin concurs, stating that the lack of rigour and resulting incoherence will not serve students at foundation, ordinary or higher level.
Nor is the additional assessment component – a non-exam element worth 40 per cent – fit for purpose.
‘Technical skills are important but so is your ability to communicate and engage with others’These women are not elitists focusing on high-flyers or students who will pursue maths at third level. They believe that mathematical thinking is vital for everyone, but especially when facing a future made murky by a potential As Mellon says: “Mathematics, through rigour, abstraction and proof, teaches students rational argument, independent thinking and objective judgment.
Students, particularly those who will never formally study maths beyond school, will need enough mathematical understanding to avoid feeling alienated in a future increasingly shaped by data and AI. Yet the draft curriculum removes most opportunities to develop precisely these critical-thinking skills. ”as “opaque decision-making processes” and work structures “flawed in design, governance and output”. She says “group decisions were not always recorded , handpicked opinions appeared in drafts and input from some members was consistently ignored”.
These are really serious governance issues. Everything raised by the two women is wearily familiar to Trevor Hickey, a University of Limerick associate professor specialising in construction technology education for teachers. He, partly because relevant construction industry and architecture expertise was excluded, but also because of the constant frustration engendered by maddeningly opaque, inefficient processes. Similarly, the biology, chemistry and physics development groups felt they were in a constant, baffling battle to get constructive criticism heard and implemented.
How can you have confidence in consultation when only inadequate short summaries of previous consultations were circulated to all development groups until September 2025, when the full submissions were finally released? The first tranche of subjects, including biology, chemistry, physics and business, was already being taught to fifth-year students by September 2025. Why would you conduct public consultations and then refuse repeated requests by development groups to access the original submissions?
Even a short 16-page summary of the consultation material for the science subjects was not circulated until after the physics development group’s last meeting. One member of the physics development group was so frustrated that he eventually felt forced to make a Freedom of Information request to access this vital feedback. The original submissions proved to be significantly less positive than the summaries. There is another fundamental problem.
Like junior cycle reform before it, senior cycle reform for all subjects is fixated on key competencies rather than the knowledge-rich curriculum frameworks prioritised by domain learning. Key competencies include thinking and solving problems, being creative, communicating, working with others, participating in society, cultivating wellbeing and managing learning and the self. Knowledge is supposed to be intrinsic to these competencies, but in practice takes second place..
For example, the old syllabus used internationally recognised standard terms like ‘functions’ and ‘calculus’, but the new specification prefaces them with “Exploring change and relationships”. , called TransformED Northern Ireland Curriculum 2028, currently out for consultation, cites evidence from cognitive science that vague, competency-focused frameworks widen educational inequalities, increase teacher workload and often fail to build student progress. When essential knowledge is not explicitly taught in a carefully sequenced, coherent way, it damages disadvantaged students most.
Unlike middle-class students, they don’t have knowledge-rich environments to help make up the deficit. Trying to interpret vague outcomes and decipher what needs to be taught also burns out already exhausted teachers even faster. The rollout of the reformed senior cycle should be suspended until all of these serious issues are addressed. Our students deserve better.
Rollout of the reformed Leaving Cert should be suspendedTrump’s focus turns to Doonbeg as thousands in Dublin and Clare protestPension coverage concerns and Lowry’s business interestsRollout of the reformed Leaving Cert should be suspended
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