A year off during high school helped Cillian Murphy and Paul Mescal become actors and has positive effects on thousands of students in Ireland. The system is praised by teenagers and teachers alike.
The transition year is the fourth year of high school in the Irish educational system, but it’s not an ordinary one. Even its name has something magical, something like Platform 9¾ from Harry Potter or the 7½ floor from the movie „Being John Malkovich,” notes The Guardian.
In Ireland, secondary education starts at the age of 12 or 13 with a three-year cycle (Junior Cycle) and concludes with an exam (Junior Certificate). Then, you can either enter directly into the two-year senior cycle to start preparing for graduation or you can opt for a transition year (TY) first, which is a kind of gap year, a period to think about what you want to do next, introduced halfway through the journey to maturity.
When high school really helps you find your way in life
There is no curriculum for the transition year, but core subjects – Irish language, English, Mathematics, Physical Education – must be covered in a certain form, for two hours per week.
Work experience is recommended for two to four weeks per year, and one hour per week is dedicated to SPHE - career guidance and social, personal, and health education. Otherwise, schools decide what needs to be done during the gap year.
Here is an example from Kishoge Community College in Dublin for 2024-2025: nine weeks each of Chinese language, folklore, and law, nine weeks of BodyRight, a consent, relationships, and friendship workshop designed by the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. Then there are any useful activities, from aviation to arts, from programming to car maintenance, from political involvement to boxing.
There is an organized program by young scientists with two separate work experience groups. Another example: two former police officers have created a crime scene and show children how an investigation is conducted.
There are no grades given, but you must participate in the activities you are enrolled in. Paul Mescal remembered being dragged into musical productions during his transition year. This led him to headlining the production of "The Phantom of the Opera." Convinced he wouldn't be selected because he was part of a sports team, he decided to give it a try and see how it turned out, thus being drawn into acting and eventually becoming an Oscar-nominated star.
Cillian Murphy also became an actor during his transition year, through a theater workshop that not only fueled his passion for the stage but also brought him into contact with artistic director Pat Kiernan, who later cast him in his innovative production "Disco Pigs." "I remember liking it. It was like a real oasis between primary and secondary school," said the star of "Oppenheimer" and "Inception."
For others, the transition year can help in other, more practical ways. Kacey, a 17-year-old in her final year at Kishoge College, is preparing for the theoretical driving test. She is terrified and says that if she gets into a car, she hits a wall. But the theoretical modules allow her to see that she's not alone in struggling, that it's hard for everyone, and thus she can learn things slowly, step by step.
"Things like: what do you put on a CV? How do you adapt your parents to the new reality that you're a young adult? How do you use the bus schedule? How do you address a community gathering on drug abuse? How do you make a burrito? The transition year says: 'OK, you need to know this soon. Sit down, we'll teach you, we don't expect you to guess,'" she explains.
How the transition year came about and why it is necessary
In 2024, 50 years have passed since the transition year was introduced in the first pilot schools in 1974, and 30 years since it was launched nationally in 1994. Now, 99% of Irish schools offer TY programs, and nearly 80% of students choose it.
It was the brainchild of Richard Burke, a passionate internationalist who joined the Fine Gael party to deepen Ireland's relationship with Europe, but whose nonconformist views on education and child development undoubtedly had the greatest impact.
"The original idea was to create a space for children where they could take a break for a year and appreciate some of the finer arts – classical music, great literature, things like that," says Burke's son, David, a lawyer.
Burke, who passed away in 2016, grew up in rural Tipperary in a large and very poor family, without a father, after World War II. What he really wanted to do was bridge the cultural gap between the rich and the poor - although education has always been taken seriously in Ireland, he emphasized quantifiable self-improvement.
Gerry Jeffers, a researcher and lecturer, one of those who contributed to the national launch of the transition year in the '90s, says the idea was "to step off the treadmill a bit": "A bit of the spirit of that wonderful poetry: 'What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?'"
The pilot program was successful, so the government funded it in the '90s by providing approximately 50 pounds to each student who followed it, Jeffers recalls, and it was expanded to almost all schools, even though initially it faced serious resistance from teachers who believed parents wouldn't want it, which initially proved to be true.
"In the '90s, typically, on live radio, people would say: 'It's a waste of time.' My attitude was: let people have their say. If this works, parents will soon come with the other side of the story. When they tried it, they saw it as something fantastic, they could see their young people growing, developing, maturing, and gaining confidence," says Jeffers.
The myth of a "year of idleness"
What remains today from those phone discussions is the "eternal" reproach that it is "a year of idleness" and objections that students can be 19 years old before finishing school, which a DJ emphasized in a vivid way, saying, "Now you see boys with thick beards in the sixth year of high school."
"Every transition year is different," says Niall Hare, the 63-year-old principal of Kishoge Community College in Dublin. The idea that it's a wasted year is a myth, and "the second myth is that parents lose their children's study habits," he says.
After TY come two years of the senior high school cycle, culminating in the Leaving Cert graduation exam, with a maximum score of 625 and decisive for which university and faculty you can attend. An ESRI study, although 20 years old, found that students who took a transition year scored an average of 40 points higher than those who entered the senior cycle directly.
The TY program is meant to provide an escape from the "pressure for points, points, points," says Jeffers. Frustrated, he poses a fundamental question: what makes a good school? One that measures how many people have gone to a prestigious university or one that helps students discover something about themselves?
The performance of the education system is indisputable. Ireland ranks well above the OECD average in mathematics and science, and second in the world in literature, after Singapore.
However, the discoveries students make about themselves can be completely unexpected.
Scott, a 17-year-old, entered the TY program thinking he wanted to be a programmer and finished wanting to study psychology. In contrast, Jess, a 17-year-old, says: "Before TY, I was just buried in books, focused on English/literature. I did the programming module and, as a result, I ended up studying computer science."
Niamh (18 years old) discovered that hiking isn't as bad as she thought. Sive, an 18-year-old, took a module on drug abuse and has since addressed a community gathering and spoken with the Irish finance minister to increase the drug prevention budget. And she learned some things needed in everyday life: "I change a tire, I cook. He was a teacher, I didn't say a word in his classes. After TY, I'm now in the fifth year, I'll sit with him in class and have lunch."
This resonates with teachers' experience - the transition year strengthens their relationships with students, and freed from the curriculum, they can explore their own passions, explains 37-year-old Dale McCarthy, who emigrated to Ireland from England after teaching in Manchester and London.
Despite all the good things, the transition year is not a perfect formula. A report this year from the Irish Ombudsman for Children recorded "complaints about fair access" and "inconsistencies in admission" to TY in schools across the country.
Children can be rejected for behavioral incidents they had no idea would have major consequences - for example, in a memorable case, a boy was denied a spot because he was assaulted in the third year.
Then there is also the financial aspect: some parents simply cannot afford the expenses. Although the government covers basic costs for teachers, providing additional funding per student and grants based on resources, for parents the expenses can be prohibitive, reaching up to 900 euros.
T.D.