Paul Hopkins: Well, that’s summer gone... it’s back to school time now

You know the summer is gone. Your know that because the schools are about to reopen. For some, it will be their first day at school – daunting in itself, their schoolbags bigger than themselves. For others, their first year in secondary school. And a record 136,160 students who sat the Leaving Certificate, Leaving Certificate Applied (LCA) and Junior Cycle exams across the country await the results of their endeavours.

Many are about to find that they face the reality of repeats or job-hunting or, in the case of 60per cent of them, the mad scramble for a place in college or university. If that 60 per cent thought the pressure for points painful, they ain’t seen nothing yet. The finance, alone, for parents and students themselves – €20,000 to €40,000 over four years, according to Zurich Insurance – is one pressure point. The need to succeed another. And then there's the reality of finding accommodation for college – but more likely travelling long distances daily from home, given the current scenario. Couch surfing, anyone?

The more than 60,000 students who have completed their Junior Cert, in 90 per cent of cases, have the option of doing Transition Year (TY). Some schools offer TY on a select basis, or don't offer it at all, while others mark the year as mandatory.

The Transition Year (TY) programme has been running since 1992 and is, in its own words, "designed to give teens a year to mature, learn new skills and gain both work and life experience". The entrepreneur Bill Cullen notoriously once said Transition Year was nothing but a "doss". Today, that notion still lingers among some parents and educators, despite the huge growth in popularity of the ‘gap’ year. There were just 27,000 pupils doing TY in 2009 when the outspoken businessman suggested it should be scrapped. Last year, close on 45,000 chose that avenue.

Meanwhile, university is not for everyone. As Mark Twain noted: "I never let schooling interfere with my education." In a changing world of out-sourcing, automation, emerging markets and empty pension funds, nothing is guaranteed anymore. Certainly not a job for life, like back in my day when one applied oneself and kept the head down.

I would suggest those leaving secondary education, unsure of what the next step should be, could do worse than take a year out to think things through.

Dare I suggest they taking the time out travelling, exploring the world, making new friends, getting a job at Happy Burger, and adapting to grown-up responsibilities, is a year at the university of life?

Alternatively, their innate aptitude may lean towards an apprenticeship. A trade, of which there are growing shortages in this country, can, in the end, pay huge dividends. Remember the last time you paid a plumber? That is, when you could manage to find one.

Bullying is, sadly, an unhappy aspect of school, cited by a quarter of those polled and rising to a third among 16 to 24-year-olds.

One in four students in Ireland aged 13 to 15 report having experienced peer-to-peer violence in and around school, according to a report by UNICEF. An Everyday Lesson: #ENDviolence in Schools says that peer violence – measured as the number of children who report having been bullied in any given month or been involved in a physical fight in the last year – is a pervasive part of young people’s education in Ireland.

"Education is fundamental in a child’s life and every child should feel safe and secure at school," says UNICEF Ireland executive director, Peter Power. "Violence has serious effects on a child’s well-being, and in the long-term it can lead to depression, anxiety and even suicide. No child should go into school fearing violence."

Back to those parents and guardians, worrying that their child's forthcoming first day at school could, indeed, be daunting, the truth is that children are born learning; it’s a survival skill that comes naturally to them.

If families learnt anything from Covid, it was that the lockdown was a chance to engage their children, young and old, in genuine learning for life, then that, I would argue, could be transformational for the development of all concerned. Genuine learning goes beyond the traditional educational subjects.

School days may well be the best days of our lives, as adults like to tell the young. Meanwhile, though, in the developing world a staggering 130 million children — one in 15 — are not in school, with 70 per cent of these being girls.