Abolish Transition year/school starting age/fees

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thedaras

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Wonder what others think of the ideas being put forward re abolition of transition year and school starting age of five.

One of mine , shouldn't have done it,but had no choice,it was compulsory,and it was disastrous for him,as he was too old..

Having said that, wasn't it brought in, in the first place because kids were so young (4) starting school and therefore too young starting college?

All mine started school at age 5 and over,and where I live,the local school don't take them until they are 5 anyway.

If kids don't start until they are 5 ,will the need for transition year be gone anyway?

Re college fees, I'm really amazed at how few hours college students do,on a lot of courses,its six hours a week! Surely this should be looked at..a three year university course could be easily reduced to two years and a four year reduced to three..that way ,the current " registration " fee of 2k a year would be 6k instead of 8k etc..

Certaintly in my kids case,she does 14 hours a week and is bored out of her tree the rest of the time!That and the amount of time they are off in incredible!
 
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I'm probably a bit slow (don't all agree now! ) but I don't quite understand how this saves the state money? For example if a child starts school at 4, 5 or 6, how does it cost the state differently for a child starting at 4 compared to one starting at 5?
That aside, we started our eldest at 5 and won't be starting the others until they are 5 either so I'd have no problem with this change. We never had the choice of transition year at our school so can't comment on the benefits or otherwise of this.
 
+1 regards starting children at 5. My eldest 2 have summer birthdays so felt 4 would have been too young. However our 3rd child's birthday is in November so I would feel it would be ok to go at 4 and 10 months, so I would expect some flexibility.

Perhaps the saving is in a combination of sending the child to school older and scrapping the tranisition year as they will be more mature doing the leaving anyway. Most people I talk to say the transition year is a waste.
 
The hours in college vary a lot. When I was in college, in a 4 year chemistry course, the class contact hours, between labs, lectures and tutorials, came to about 30 hours a week, before you started studying.

The arts type students did seem to have a lot less hours!
 
Transition year was complusory in my school and at the time I thought it was the biggest waste of time ever, but looking back on it now, it gave me so much confidence and I learned so much from the year. I did two weeks work experience that lead to a proper part time job afterwards. I learned to cook. I visited places in Ireland and abroad that I probably never would have, including doing an exchange student living with a family for two weeks in Austria (with a trip to Italy and Slovenia included). We had to run our own business during the year, design a product and market it. I learned how to canoe, how to do self defence, first aid, speak a few words in chinese, and became great friends with my fellow students.

The year was structured and we had classes, but it was more hands on and as far as I know, the year developed over time into something bigger and better. A good friend on mine went to another school in the area and skipped transition year and he did his leaving cert at the age of 16. I was 18 and felt more ready for it and for jumping into the real world after school.
 
Over the longterm there won't be a saving - as you say, each child still goes to school for 13/14 years. There will be a one-off upfront saving/delayed cost as the first year's worth of children work their way through school (if they can scale back the number of teachers and other costs). If a primary school normally has 50 in each class so normally 400 across the 8 classes (junior infants to 6th class), then in year 1 (assuming junior infants pupils are normally 50% age 5 and 50% age 4), junior infants will only have 25 kids so the school will only have 375 pupils. The second year, there will be a normal intake of 50 junior infants (all age 5) but senior infants will only have the 25 who started the previous year. So until those original 25 work their way through the 8 grades, the school will only have 375 pupils instead of 400. Then the reverse bulge will hit secondary school, work their way through 5/6 years there - and when they are gone, there'll be no more saving... Hopefully the country will be in better shape (gulp...) in 13/14 years time.
 
We plan to send our children to school when they are 5 and luckily they turn 5 before that September, but what about a child who turns 5 say in October....do they have to wait until they're almost 6 before going to school?

I'm not sure how much the transition year costs the state and it would be hard to measure its effectiveness, but given the state of the country's finances it does to me look like a "nice to have" rather than a necessity.

I think 3rd level fees should be introduced with reduced state funding for the colleges. Let the colleges provide courses that students are willing to pay for.
 
Things like this will save very little in the overall education budget. The elephant in the room remains the wages and pensions bill but of course we are not allowed to talk about that. Not saying it should be cut but I have never heard of a company trying to save money but ignore the biggest ticket item in their expenses.
 

I have to agree. The taxpayer gets to look forward to higher taxes for less services whilst those in "protected" jobs are left alone.
 
Firefly said:
I have to agree. The taxpayer gets to look forward to higher taxes for less services whilst those in "protected" jobs are left alone.
Click to expand...

Why is this turning into another public servant bash?

Those in "protected" jobs as you call them are taxpayers too and have not been left alone.
 
My son's birthday is in the 2nd half of September, and yes he had to wait until almost his 6th birthday to start school. There was up to 9 or 10 months age difference between him and some of the other children. Even though he was closer in age and ability than those in the class above he wasn't allowed to move up.

He skipped TY and went from being one of the eldest in his class to one of the youngest, he is not 18 for a few more weeks but most of his friends are 19 or almost 19. It did him no harm, he did very well in his LC yesterday! A few of his mates have said they wish they hadn't bothered with it, others loved it so I think it should be kept as an option.

The only savings were for us as far as I can tell, one less year to buy uniforms, field trips etc.

I think when it comes to third level it depends on the course, I am sure there are lots that could be cut down by a year if they put more hours in a week. A nephew of mine is doing a 4 year course in Edinburgh but only is obliged to attend 12 hours a week of lectures, but the course my son is hoping to do demands at least 16 hours ( lectures and lab time)plus studying, research and writing up time.
 
Congrats to your son JP1234..
Re Edinburgh, as far as I know there are no fees or "registration" fees in Edinburgh.
A son of a friend of mine is heading to Aberdeen,to study physio,as its free there,even though he could do it here!
 
JP1234 said:
My son's birthday is in the 2nd half of September, and yes he had to wait until almost his 6th birthday to start school.
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Not trying to be pedantic but why couldn't he start when he was 4 and 11 months instead of 5 and 11 months? I thought Irish schools have always let kids start at 4? Did your school have its own rules?
 
orka said:
Not trying to be pedantic but why couldn't he start when he was 4 and 11 months instead of 5 and 11 months? I thought Irish schools have always let kids start at 4? Did your school have it's own rules?
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No idea to be honest, we were just told he couldn't start until he was 5 and that was that! We didn't question it at the time!

thedaras said:
Congrats to your son JP1234..
Re Edinburgh, as far as I know there are no fees or "registration" fees in Edinburgh.
A son of a friend of mine is heading to Aberdeen,to study physio,as its free there,even though he could do it here!
Click to expand...

Thanks!
I believe third level is free for him ( he has lived most of his life in Scotland) but you wouldn't know it listening to his mother complain about the cost of sending him college
 
In the 1970's I started school aged 3yrs 8 months. It didnt cause me any problems developmentally or academically, but I was rather young leaving school 13 years later. looking back now it would have been beneficial to me as a 16yo to have done a transition year, even for the current 18 or 19yo's I can see the benefits. A year's postponement of going to college/training can be a very good thing. I think 5 years of age is a good age to start school and a lot of kids these days have experience of creches so its not a completely alien environment. certainly when I started school, there were no creches, indeed from memory practically all mothers of kids in my early classes didnt work outside the home. I think there could be some discretion as to whether a child can start school if not yet 5 years of age. I quickly forgot my first day at school, so it was either too traumatic or a non-event! I remember my first teacher, she was strict ( but with 25-30 4-5 yo's you'd have to be) but nice, she passed away about 4 years ago and I still remember her with fondness.

Regarding free time on certain college courses, my scientific degree course was the opposite of handy. The first two years were 9am to 6pm lectures/laboratory monday/tuesday/thursday/friday with an hour off for lunch, with wednesdays being 9am to 1pm. 3rd year was a short academic year, lots of lectures and labs and a 6 month job placement. 4th year mornings were lectures and labs. Afternoons were your own, but you would be studying, doing assignments/projects etc
 
Firefly said:
I have to agree. The taxpayer gets to look forward to higher taxes for less services whilst those in "protected" jobs are left alone.
Click to expand...

I'll bet that those who're in "protected" jobs are glad that they're not tax payers and that they don't have to look forward to higher taxes.
 

Two of our kids did transition year. The first got on fine during the year but found it a little difficult to adjust to full academia at the start of 5th year. I don't think it would have made too much difference to him if he hadn't done it. For the second, it was a tremendous success and he eased straight back into school work in 5th year, much the better for it.

When our kids were of a school starting age, the 4 versus 5 year old chestnut always came up on nights out, at parties, etc. As far as I know, we were all advised not to start them until they were 5 and ours were all 5 when they started school. The advice was that, while they might be ready academically, they probably wouldn't be, from a maturity point of view.

I'm not sure that I'd agree with you about the hours they have to put in in college. Our college-goer had around 16 hours of lectures every week with about another 4 hours in tutorials. And he definitely spent 8-10 hours every week doing projects and assignments, etc. It probably depends on the course and, I'd imagine, the workload might be greater in certain years as opposed to others.
 
Lex Foutish said:
I'll bet that those who're in "protected" jobs are glad that they're not tax payers and that they don't have to look forward to higher taxes.
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Hi Lex & RonanC,

I should have re-phrased my point. Of course PS workers pay tax and have been affected by higher taxes, but as numbers in say admin staff have not been cut the result is reduced services to the public. Again, this is off-point so apologies for not keeping it to the current topic and the last thing I was to do is start a PS rant.

Thanks y'all
 
I do not think there should be such a age gag between kids in a classroom, in my son class (junior infant) last year, there was a 20 months age gap between the oldest kid and the youngest one (they all started new last year, no repeat) A few of the youngest one have to repeat JI this year due to lack of maturity (not all). My preference will be that all kids born in the same year should be starting school together to reduce this age gap.
 
@STEINER, I agree that some courses have a lot of contact time,ie; medicine, vetinary,engineering etc.
However Arts,Social Science,Business and law have approx 6 to 14 hours contact time.
Some of those courses last four years...
I know from personal experience that some students only do these hours plus they are off from early May until late Setember.
My point is these courses could easily be reduced by a year,that way savings for both the student and the state would be made.
That is why I wrote in my OP "some "courses.
 
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