Making history mandatory will be popular - but could damage Junior Cycle reforms

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Principals fear decision could hamper efforts to engage some of the hardest-to-reach pupils

This helped inform reforms which resulted in the Junior Cycle and which sought to give schools - especially those in working-class areas and special-needs schools - more freedom to meet their students’ individual needs within an overcrowded curriculum.

It has been an optional subject in what used to be known as vocational schools, which account for almost half of post-primary schools. It has, however, been required of all students in voluntary secondary schools, which are typically owned or run by religious orders. Other subjects will - rightly - demand that they too should be compulsory. A compelling case can be made for geography, science, business studies, art, French or Spanish to be mandatory.Another feature of the debate over the status of history is that it has been about reducing history to a binary choice: students either study it or not.They say the new Junior Cycle promotes areas of “core learning” rather than core subjects, and that history remains important in the curriculum.

In vocational schools again, where the subject has been optional for decades, about 90 per cent of students study history during the Junior Cycle. This is because these schools see its value and have chosen to make it a core subject, or students have chosen it themselves.

 

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