Schools Out!

The 2024/2025 academic year has now concluded for CCI school workshops, and it was the busiest year yet. For the first time since CCI started in 2022, our team of enthusiastic PhD researchers engaged with over a thousand students in a single academic year. They visited Transition Year and Leaving Cert students in 40 schools across 16 counties since September. This year, over 80% of all students rated the CCI workshop as good or excellent, in line with previous years Also, 60% of the Leaving Cert (5th and 6th year) students we visited felt that the workshop encouraged them to pursue a STEM career, with most of the rest remaining undecided. The next academic year (2025/26) will be the final one for the CCI programme, with the project team now turning their attention to support the new Leaving Cert science specifications. A new research paper is also in preparation, showcasing the rich longitudinal data collected by CCI from 2,656 students in 120 schools to date – a quarter of which are designated DEIS.  It’s hard to believe how far we have come since the end of the COVID pandemic, but there’s no doubt that CCI has been a huge success with long term impact.

The booking for for new workshops is now closed, we will prioritize schools who have never received a workshop for the 2025/2026 academic year, followed by those who haven’t received a workshop since the beginning of the project. Thank you to Loreto Mullingar, Rochfordbridge Community School, Carrigaline Community School and Loreto Balbriggan, all of which we visited over the past few weeks.