‘If you know your Flann O’Brien, you’ll know that bike maintenance and philosophy go arse-on-saddle in this country,” Niall Hare, the 63-year-old headteacher at Kishoge community college in Dublin, told me. He was running through what his students do on their “transition year”, which is the missing fourth year (a year 11 in England, Wales, year 12 in Northern Ireland or S4 in Scotland) of the Irish education system. Even the way it’s named has a magical, secret-compartment quality, like Platform 9 3/4 in Harry Potter, or the 7 1/2th floor in Being John Malkovich.
In Ireland, secondary school starts with the three-year junior cycle, beginning at age 12 or 13, and concluding with a Junior Certificate (roughly equivalent to a GCSE in England, Wales and Northern Ireland or Nationals in Scotland). Then you can either go straight into the two-year senior cycle to start preparing for the Leaving Certificate (roughly equivalent to A-levels or the International Baccalaureate), or you can have a transition year (TY) first – so you could think of it as a kind of gap year, halfway through secondary school.
