Transition Times: Could religion, a new subject for the Leaving Certificate, be for you?

If you're looking for something new to study next year you can't get much more novel than Leaving Cert religious education. It was offered for the first time in September and won't be examined until 2006. If you think it might be the subject for you, try to find a student who's taking the new syllabus this year and pick their brains. It could be tricky, though: the numbers are very low.

You can have a good look at the syllabus on the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment website (www.ncca.ie), but as yet there are no text books to study: teachers and publishers are still working on resource material for a course that is expected to be very wide ranging and to involve quite a lot of Internet research and other student-led investigation.

"This is a course which will interest students who love English and history, as there is plenty of reading involved," says David Martin, a religious-education teacher. "It is also a useful subject for students who are thinking about taking philosophy or sociology at third level. This course examines some very advanced and challenging topics."

For anyone who associates school religion classes with long discussions and a bit of a break from real work, don't expect the same from the formal religious-education programme. This is quite an academic subject that should fascinate students who are interested in examining some very profound questions.

According to the curriculum guide, "religious education in the Leaving Certificate programme calls for the exploration of issues such as meaning and value, the nature of morality, the development and diversity of belief, the principles of a just society and the implications of scientific progress."

The course includes a compulsory section called The Search for Meaning and Values; beyond that students can choose from a range of topics, including Christianity, world religions, moral decision making, religion and gender, justice and peace, and religion and science.

It's a serious line-up: this is no doss subject. Students who take the course will complete a research topic worth a quarter of the overall mark. Apart from that the exam is an unknown for the time being. Sample papers will be available from the NCCA, but the real thing will become available only in June 2006.

For an archive of the Decision time series, go to the transition-year section of www.skoool.ie