Could Scotland learn from Ireland's exam-free fourth year?
In Scotland, the main qualifications in upper secondary – National 5, Higher and, to a lesser degree, Advanced Higher – are one-year courses; in contrast, Ireland certifies school leavers via a two-year programme known as the Leaving Certificate. As with the Scottish system, Ireland's culminates in a set of high-stakes exams that serve a key role in university applications.
But a single, two-year course for school leavers opens an obvious gap in the fourth year of secondary school, when Scottish students typically take six or seven one-year National 5 courses. The experience for the vast majority of their Irish peers is radically different.
Ireland encourages young people at this age to participate in something called a Transition Year (TY), which is part of the latter stage of secondary, but is not assessed using formal exams or structured around an exam-focused timetable.
The Transition Year concept was introduced in 1974 in response to what the then Minister for Education called the 'growing pressures on students for high grades and competitive success'. This phenomenon, he warned, meant that education systems were 'becoming increasingly academic treadmills' and schools, 'because of these pressures', were also 'losing contact with life outside.'
In the early years results were good, but uptake was low. In the mid-80s, the provision of greater support and the effects of wider structural changes led to an increase in the number of schools offering the programme; further guidance and major senior cycle reform then sparked a huge jump in provision, with the number of participating schools jumping from 19 percent in 1993 to 60 percent the following year. At this point, just under a third of all students took up the offer of a Transition Year.
Over the next two decades, both figures continuously increased: by 2021 coverage had reached 98 percent of schools, with 74 percent of pupils taking up the option of a Transition Year.
According to Dr Majella Dempsey, Associate Professor of Education at Maynooth University, the programme is almost entirely unique. The only other country to offer something similar is Korea – which like Ireland, is a high-performing country in PISA international tests, and which has actually been inspired to introduce its own programme by the success of the Irish approach.
Although there is 'no designated curriculum', schools do operate under a 'framework for how they can organise the year.'
This decentralised approach leaves schools free to develop their own programmes, incorporating various different subjects, broader areas of study, specialist educational modules, one-off events, out-of-school learning activities, and more.
'They can't just use the class time to do a three-year Leaving Cert,' Dr Dempsey notes. 'Students tend to do a lot of project-based learning, and even travelling to other European countries all sorts of different things.'
Subjects studied all year as part of the 'core' layer include Gaeilge, English, Maths, PE, ICT and RE. A 'subject sampling' layer allows students to complete modules from a range of other traditional subjects, and a 'Transition Year specific layer' provides opportunities to study areas such as photography, mental health, tourism, innovation, psychology and more.
The final 'calendar' layer means that programmes such as work experience, outdoor pursuits, field trips, and dramatic or musical productions can all be included in the Transition Year model.
A major part of the focus for schools is on supporting the development of independent learning skills while encouraging students to explore both existing and emerging areas of interest. Irish actor Cillian Murphy has spoken about the positive effect that the Transition Year had on him, once describing the period as a 'real oasis' and himself as a 'big advocate' of the system. According to a 2022 report as part of updates to the TY programme, 'students and teachers describe the classroom as liberated due to the learning-led focus of TY and the absence of exam-pressure.'
Evidence also suggests that the benefits of the Transition Year are carried over in some way into Leaving Certificate studies. Students participating in the programme have been found to be more engaged in their studies overall, and a report for the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment states that there is 'reliable evidence that students who do TY achieve a substantially higher performance in the Leaving Certificate' – although it adds that the precise reasons for this correlation remain unclear.
It's also clear that the system isn't perfect. Around a quarter of young people report being disappointed or underwhelmed by their Transition Year, with an apparently common complaint being the feeling that some teachers don't take the classes as seriously as others.
According to Dr Dempsey the quality of a student's Transition Year is also affected by socioeconomic factors, because some of the activities that a school might want to consider – like foreign travel – cannot be entirely funded by schools.
But even at its weakest, she adds, the research would say that the Transition Year, and being free from exams throughout that period, 'is very good for young people.'
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