As secondary schools reopen this week after three months of noodling around during the summer months, approximately 45,000 students will be commencing what is officially called Transition Year (TY).

To all intents and purposes, this is a year devoted to personal growth, bonding and tasting new skills.

It is designed to encourage students to think outside the box and to grow in maturity.

All good, worthy aspirations but does the year actually deliver anything genuinely worthwhile or meaningful?

With 661 out of 714 post-primary schools now offering the TY, it is pertinent to ask should the content of this year be left entirely to individual schools to decide upon?

I don’t believe it should, because this takes quality control out of the equation and that is never good.

While some schools will create impressive programmes to keep students motivated and engaged, others will offer the minimum.

It also leaves the distinct possibility of creating an uneven playing field for students from different parts of the country and from different socio-economic groupings. In real terms, this can mean better work experience options for students whose parents have personal contacts in desirable fields of work. Patently unfair.

The secondary school cycle here was always five years’ duration. The first State exam took place after three years of academic study, usually aged 16 years, while the Leaving Certificate took up the final two years. The decision to reduce academic study to five years and introduce transition year, as a buttress between the two State examinations, was introduced in 1994. It means that most Junior Cert students are just 15 years of age when they undertake their first, arguably significant, State examination.While the basic concept of a time to transition from being a junior student to becoming a senior one has merit in principle, in practice it is somewhat hit and miss.

Do you really need a whole year to bond with your classmates, learn the guitar or take up kayaking? Surely that is the purpose of taking part in extra curricular activities in the first place.

I think it would be fair to say that most students are more than capable of arranging to go to the movies without requiring the help of a TY co-ordinator to organise it.

Devoting a full year to formulaic work projects, mini-modules of different subjects and some trips – both home and abroad – does not seem adequate justification.

Anecdotally, many parents confirm this.

While students are often enthusiastic in the beginning, attendance can easily drop off, especially if what is on offer is vague and difficult to relate to.

Is it fair that many schools make the year mandatory?

I don’t believe it should be so. However, the alternative is to go straight into 5th year to commence the senior cycle and finish school at age 17. So it amounts to a Hobson’s choice scenario for most.

There is no good reason why school-going children should require work experience to list on their Curriculum Vitae (CV.

A report undertaken by the Irish Second-Level Students’ Union (ISSU) into the merits of TY in secondary schools stated that many students outside of large urban areas were unable to find meaningful work experience.

In other words, rural students are completing work experience for the sake of it – in the likes of local shopping centres – simply because of a lack of other opportunities. This is meaningless and amounts to little more than killing time.

Such experience will have little benefit in helping students choose appropriate subjects at Leaving Cert level, the supposed purpose of the work experience.

There is no doubt that the TY is a major additional cost burden to already hard-pressed parents trying to negotiate their way through the so-called free school system.

Contributions range from €300 to well in excess of €1,000, with ongoing additional costs arising throughout the year.

And luxury overseas trips often form part of the year to far-flung destinations like China and the Santiago de Compostela Camino walk?

Worthwhile language exchanges for a fixed period might be far more useful than long-haul holidays to destinations that many parents have never even set foot in themselves.

There is also the real danger that children from poorer homes will take part-time jobs in place of work experience placements. The ISSU report confirmed this.

This gives young people the taste of earning money, which many will feel ill-inclined to relinquish once they commence the two-year Leaving Certificate cycle.

It might be far more productive to at least offer our students the option of a full six-year secondary school academic cycle.

For those students whose parents do not have the money to spend on private grinds to make up the shortfall, it could make a vast difference, the benefits of which would last a lifetime.

Irish Independent