Science Project – Sl ide Show

How the Recession Effects Education in Ireland.

By Emma Rogan, Kate O’Neill and Ellie Perry

Introduction• We chose the title “How the recession

effects education in Ireland” as we felt that it was a very topical, especially for people entering 3rd level education.

• We also thought it would be interesting and that we could discover and learn a lot from doing the project.

Our Aim.• We aim to discover if the recession has

had an effect on our education system in Ireland and if so, in what way.

Experimental Methods.

•. Our title ‘The effect of the recession on education’ meant that we had to conduct surveys of students who will be sitting their Leaving Certificate in 2012 and will be making choices affecting their careers. We also had to research statistics online..

• We selected two secondary schools in County Kildare, one all boys and the other all girls, to give us balanced results.

• We surveyed 70 students in total.

• Then the group analysed the surveys.

• The group also gathered information from the Central Administration Office, (CAO).

• Of the results we analysed we discovered that 66% of those surveyed felt that the recession did not influence their choice of col lege: whi le 34% felt it did

. Many were determined to go to their preferred col lege regardless. Here are some comments made by students questioned:

• ‘I always wanted to go to Maynooth and the recession won’t deter me’

• ‘The college I really want to go to is near my home and that will save my parents on paying for accommodation for me’

• ‘Even if a college is expensive I want to go to the best so that I will definitely get a solid qualification that will ensure that I get a job’

• ‘The college I wanted to go is too far from home and my parents can’t afford the fees overall’

Gr a p h R e su l t s

The graph above shows the first preference of science and how it peaked in 2011 which we can see happened gradually from 2009. Looking back to 2001 it shows how science was not a focus in students’ subject choices.

I n t h i s g r a p h a g r i cu l t u r a l /h o r t i c u l t u r e c o u r se s w e r e v e r y p o p u l a r i n 2 0 1 1 . Th i s c a n b e se e n t o h a v e j u m p e d i n p o p u l a r i t y o v e r t h a t o n e y e a r . Th e l o w e st y e a r w a s i n 2 0 0 5 .

I n t e r e st i n H u m a n M e d i c i n e h a s g r o w n g r e a t l y o v e r t h e l a st 1 0 y e a r s, w i t h i t ’s l a r g e st n u m b e r o f 1 st p r e f e r e n c e s b e i n g 3 7 5 5 i n t h e y e a r 2 0 1 0 .

• We discovered through the experiments that we conducted that the recession has had a very negative effect on education in Ireland.