Teaching Matters/Danny O'Hare: As teachers gather this week for their annual conferences, will they heed the wake-up call provided by the news that 28 per cent of UCD students in science are failing the subject in their first year or are dropping out altogether?

One thing this means is that our schools are still not delivering enough students with both the ability and the motivation to pursue science-related subjects. It is an issue that should concern all teachers - not just those involved in the relevant subjects - because it signals a failure of the school system as a whole to meet a high-priority national need. If that continues, it threatens the connection between education and our economic development, the very connection that underpins the present investment in education at all levels. The risk is that our entire school system will become irrelevant.

Join the dots . . . We have chosen to hang our hat on excelling in the knowledge-based society. Central to that is our ability to attract inward investment from leading-edge companies in information technology and biotechnology. In turn, our ability to attract that investment depends crucially on an appropriately-skilled workforce. That means, above all, a large pool of graduates in science and engineering disciplines.

But against that inevitable demand, our supply of these skills is decreasing. Fewer students are choosing science-related subjects at university level, notwithstanding a dramatic fall in the points needed to take such courses. The root cause of this fall-off is to be found in our schools, where these subjects are taught unimaginatively and without the necessary physical resources such as laboratories and equipment.

Is there a solution? Indeed there is. In fact, the real scandal is not that the problem has not been recognised (the Government has been aware of the issue for several years). Nor is that we lack a blueprint for meeting the challenge (that was supplied in the report of the Government's own Task Force on the Physical Sciences, available at www.irlgov.ie/educ/pub.htm). The real scandal is that, despite having seen the problem and devised a comprehensive solution for it, we have done virtually nothing to implement that solution in the three years since it was published.

Given the importance of this issue for our economic future, the recent figures from UCD are surely something that teachers should be interrogating Minister for Education Mary Hanafin about when they meet her this week. There can be few issues more important for our school system, quite apart from its importance to the wider community.

At this point, I must declare an interest. I chaired the task force that charted the way forward on this issue. As such, I am reminded that the report was a unanimous one, widely welcomed across the national spectrum.

The road-map put forward was a comprehensive one, reaching across all levels of the education system and beyond. Central to the proposals were the suggestions on school planning and resources, which would enable all schools to target science education as a developmental priority at both primary and post-primary levels. A collaborative approach to planning and action would systematically address barriers to take-up of the physical sciences, emphasising increased levels of practical work and the necessary laboratory resources (including technical assistants) to make this possible. Special attention was to be paid to encouraging science among Junior Certificate and transition-year students.

This is not the place to set out the entire programme proposed by the task force. Suffice it to say that, to ensure the programme actually got delivered and adapted as necessary to realise its goals, we proposed that an implementation group be set up. This has not been done. We also proposed that the Irish Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (ICSTI) make an annual review of the state of science education. This has not been done either.

In fact, three years on, the only element of the comprehensive plan to be implemented is the Discover promotional programme for science and technology. Worthy as that is, it certainly cannot do the whole job on its own.

Why the neglect? Could it be that the dead hand of the Department of Finance was raised against it, on grounds of cost? In view of its comprehensive sweep, it will be no surprise that this programme would not come cheap. The task force estimated (in 2002) that to implement it it would require €178 million in capital investment, plus recurrent costs of €66 million each year. But to put this spending in context: what is at stake here is the ability of our young economy to continue to grow, and to maintain the success already achieved.

In particular, it is perhaps useful to place these figures alongside the attempted new Government investment in Intel, which was aborted by the EU. Such a comparison is interesting, for two reasons. First, it puts in context the overall scale of money involved, which is modest in relation to what the Government is ready to spend routinely to encourage inward investment. But more importantly, it highlights the fact that the door is closing on our ability to attract investment through financial supports. In the future, more than ever, projects will be attracted by the quality of whatever human skills we have to offer.

And the EU puts no restrictions on what we spend on education.

Danny O'Hare is a former president of DCU