The new Leaving Certificate agricultural science syllabus was examined for the first time on Monday 21 June.

The Irish Agricultural Science Teachers’ Association (IASTA) has said that over the past two years, teachers have experienced problems interpreting the new syllabus.

The association’s members sent a submission to Minister Norma Foley in October 2020 pointing out what they see as the two major problems associated with teaching the new syllabus:

  • “The template used to design the new Leaving Certificate Agricultural Science specification consists simply of a list of learning outcomes with no additional information accompanying the learning outcomes to help teachers interpret the learning outcomes in terms of depth of treatment regarding what exactly should be covered in the classroom.”
  • “There are nine pages of learning outcomes on the new syllabus. There are mistakes in the writing of the learning outcomes on seven of these pages. The fact that the learning outcomes are written in a vague and incorrect manner means that many of them are impossible to interpret by teachers and students alike.”