Why now

The Irish Senior Cycle curriculum is being redeveloped right now, and the NCCA has already added subjects that didn't exist a decade ago. Philosophy is an important part of that conversation.

Irish students get little focused training in constructing an argument, telling valid reasoning from invalid, weighing competing ethical claims, or judging how they come to know what they think they know. These are skills used daily in law, technology, medicine, journalism, business and public life, whatever a student goes on to do. That training is more relevant now than ever, given how quickly generative AI has influenced how students approach schoolwork. Philosophy is also one of the least expensive subjects the NCCA could add: no labs, no equipment, no capital cost — only a curriculum, a teacher-training pathway, and an exam.

The value isn't only professional. The same habits and skills — defining terms, weighing evidence, arguing fairly, seeing how different areas of thought connect — help in everyday life: in friendships, family and parenting, in making sense of politics and the news, in how we relate to science and religion, and in our own pursuit of knowledge. Many find philosophical practice therapeutic.

This Can Work

The research

A primary survey of Irish students, teachers, graduates and employers is running alongside this proposal to further the research below.

Proposed syllabus

A suggested starting point for a Leaving Certificate Philosophy course: four strands, a small group of core thinkers, and an assessment that rewards reasoning rather than recall.

This is a draft for discussion, not a finished specification. Anyone can suggest changes using the feedback form at the end of this section. Everything submitted will be discussed at a public conference in 2027, and the outline will then be revised before it is formally submitted to the NCCA.

How the course would work

• Skills and ways of thinking come first. The aim is to build tools: reading closely and accurately, defining terms, constructing and testing arguments, weighing evidence, and changing your mind for good reasons. Content serves those skills, not the other way round.
• Discussion over rote learning. Texts are a starting point for dialogue, objection and reply. Classes are built around dialectic, where students defend, challenge and refine positions, rather than reproducing notes.
• Depth over breadth. Rather than skimming many thinkers, each class studies one or two in depth. That leaves time to understand difficult ideas properly. Texts are chosen to reward patient reading, with accessible extracts and translations favoured over notoriously difficult works.
• The abstract and the applied, in balance. Every strand pairs a classic question with concrete cases: an ethical dilemma from medicine or technology, a claim from the news, an argument from a speech or an advert.
• Connected, not linear. The strands inform one another (ethics needs logic; science needs epistemology), so there is no fixed starting point and teachers can begin wherever suits their class.

The four strands

Thinkers

Beyond that shared group, each strand lists thinkers who could be studied in depth. Teachers would choose one or two from the suite for their class, much as English classes choose between set texts: one class might study Quine while another studies Camus. That gives students the time to engage properly with difficult ideas instead of being overwhelmed by many thinkers at once, and the suite can be rotated over time. The lists above are examples rather than a final selection, and several thinkers appear under more than one strand.

Assessment

This matches the standard the NCCA now applies to new and redeveloped Senior Cycle subjects, a minimum of 40% non-written, externally assessed work, and suits a subject built on discussion. Across both components, marks reward the quality of reasoning, fairness to opposing views and clarity of expression, not how much a student has memorised.

Who would teach it

Logic overlaps with Maths and Computer Science; Ethics overlaps with Religious Education, CSPE and Politics & Society; Epistemology and Philosophy of Science overlap with Physics, Chemistry and Biology. A CPD conversion course — the same model used for Politics & Society — could qualify existing teachers directly.

There's a second, larger pool too: only 34% of philosophy PhD graduates take a permanent academic position (APDA, 2021). A great many capable, subject-expert teachers currently have nowhere stable to go — philosophers of maths, language, science, religion and logic among them, all able to cover adjacent subjects too. A substantial teaching workforce already exists, underused.

Common questions

Realistic path

Immediate next steps:

• Identify 3–5 schools willing to pilot a Transition Year Philosophy module.
• Gather survey evidence from students, parents, teachers, graduates and employers.
• Build a sample Transition Year module and teacher support pack.
• Secure endorsements from university philosophy departments and education bodies.
• Collect feedback on the draft syllabus and discuss it at a public conference in 2027.
• Submit a formal proposal to the NCCA as part of Senior Cycle Redevelopment.

Get involved

Useful links

Everything this proposal draws on, so anyone can check the case themselves or dig further.