Road safety lessons may be introduced for Leaving Cert students

Road safety lessons for Leaving Cert students are being considered by Minister for Education Norma Foley in the wake of recent deaths involving young people on Irish roads.

Ms Foley wrote to the Road Safety Authority last week seeking to explore avenues to enhance road safety education within schools, especially during senior cycle.

While there are modules on road safety at Junior Cycle, Ms Foley said measures targeting older students should be considered, given that this group is most likely to be learning to drive.

“There has been a significant and saddening increase in fatalities on Irish roads in the past year, many of which have tragically involved children and young people,” she wrote in a letter to Road Safety Authority chairman Sam Waide.

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“This worrying trend must be curbed, and I believe awareness raising has a very significant role to play in this regard.”

She asked for the authority to explore potential avenues for awareness-raising measures in schools, especially at senior cycle.

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In transition year, she said, there was scope for further enhancement of road safety awareness and invited the authority to contribute to its consultation on the redevelopment of transition year.

A consultation process over a redeveloped transition year is currently subject to a public consultation, while moves to redevelop the Leaving Cert are under way.

Four young people were killed in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, last month on the way to celebrate Leaving Cert results. In July two teenagers also died in a road traffic collision in Co Monaghan.

The Road Safety Authority has an outreach team that visits schools to promote safe road behaviour and safer methods of walking, cycling and travelling by car or bus.

Ms Foley, meanwhile, has been urged to make schoolbooks free at second level in next month’s Budget to ease financial pressure on parents.

The Children’s Rights Alliance said school costs place an immense burden on low-income families, with the average costs to meet the “basic needs” of a first-year student at second level climbing to almost €1,000.

The call follows last year’s budget which provided free schoolbooks to primary school students for the first time.

The cost of supplying free schoolbooks at primary level is just over €50 million, and providing the same at post-primary would be likely to cost a further €70 million or more, according to informed sources.

The alliance has also called for additional staff to be appointed to education welfare services to help boost school attendance, as well as expanding the home school community liaison scheme to support struggling families.

“Poverty is not inevitable,” said Tanya Ward, chief executive of the Children’s Rights Alliance. “We have seen how policy decisions, and the right political action, can transform children and young people’s lives for the better. While the Deis Programme has been hugely successful, too many children aren’t reaching their full potential in education.”

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She noted that half of all children in poverty are not in Deis – or disadvantaged area – schools, and services aimed at early school leavers were struggling to cope.

“Children from low-income families should have the same opportunities as their peers – they shouldn’t have to fight every step of the way to get the education so many of us take for granted,” Ms Ward said.

“The Government has started to grapple with the cost of education but addressing inequality will require thinking beyond cost to the care and support we can provide children facing a multitude of challenges.”