I will take the Chairman's warning to heart. He is absolutely correct. I wish to introduce my colleagues, Mary Kerr, deputy secretary of the Higher Education Authority, and Fergal Costello, head of policy and planning. I will briefly recap on who we are and what we do.
The Higher Education Authority is a statutory body which advises the Department and the Minister on third level education. We are also the vehicle for mainstream Exchequer funding to the universities. The institutes of technology do not, as yet, come within our remit. However, it is the Minister's intention that funding for the institutes should move into the Higher Education Authority ambit in the near future.
I will cover the legislative context because much of the data has already been dealt with by Mr. McDonagh. I will then set out the actions in which the Higher Education Authority is engaged and bring the committee up to speed on the statutory review of university quality policies about which the Higher Education Authority will make a major announcement later today. I will then outline our plans in relation to the national office and some issues in the current debate.
An important backdrop to the debate on equality are the provisions of the Universities Act 1997. Every university is obliged under the Act to promote gender balance and equality of opportunity among students and employees of the university. Universities are also required to prepare and implement equality policies. The Act requires the Higher Education Authority to assist the universities and to review these policies and their implementation.
As part of the effort of assisting the universities, we commissioned Professor Malcolm Skilbeck to survey international practice on equality policies. The analytical approach shown in the presentation reflects Professor Skilbeck's methodology. Essentially, he divides the disadvantaged group into various target groups, namely, those with socio-economic disadvantage, people with disabilities, gender, mature students and part-time students, rural groups, racial minorities and Travellers.
I will quickly skip through the data that shows the long-term trend. There is an interesting slide entitled "regional participation at leaving cert". Mr. McDonagh referred to the fact that there are important transition points, both at primary and secondary level, in terms of access to third level education. The regional variations in the number of students who reach the leaving certificate are interesting, as are the variations by gender. There is a growing problem in persuading young men from lower socio-economic backgrounds to complete their second level education. This has a bearing on third level participation rates.
The next slide shows some more data on the same theme and gives a snapshot of exits from the education system, broken down by social class. This was produced from a report, commissioned by the HEA, from Professor Patrick Clancy and Ms Joy Wall of UCD. Members can see that persistence or completion at second level is dependent on social class.
The next chart shows entry to third level. We can see quite significant differences between different socio-economic groups. It is interesting that the higher professional group has reached saturation level. There is a virtually 100% chance that a young person completing the leaving certificate from a higher professional group will proceed to third level. The position among the least well-off socio-economic group - the unskilled manual worker group - is interesting. In 1980, there was a 3% probability that someone from that group would progress to third level. That has now increased to 23%, which is a significant rate of improvement, but is still below the participation for better-off classes.
It is interesting to look at the Irish situation in comparison with a sample of other countries. The next chart illustrates some OECD data. The black bar shows the overall rate of increase for participation in third level by young adults in terms of the general population for a sample of countries. The dotted line inside with the white marker shows the rate of increase for less well off socio-economic groups. In all countries, with the interesting exception of the United States, the general rate of increase is greater than the rate of increase for the less well-off groups. We asked the OECD to look at this data again in the light of more recent data, which they did for us privately, and they came back with the interesting figure that, with the exception of the US and Ireland, the rate of general participation was higher than the rate of increase for the less well off groups. Ireland joins the US in having a higher rate of increase in participation levels for less well off students than for the general student body. That in itself is an indicator of some progress.
The next slide shows data from a different source - the "Euro Student" report, published late last year. It shows the ratio of students' fathers from a working class background, relative to their proportion in the national population. This is an index of egalitarianism as far as progress to third level is concerned. It is interesting and perhaps unsurprising that Finland, which has a deeply embedded social democratic and egalitarian ethos, has a ratio of almost unity, whereas Ireland is in second place in that group.
The next chart shows the socio-economic breakdown between the institutes of technology and the universities and it is interesting that the ITs have been an major contributor to access by less well-off groups to higher education.
The Higher Education Authority operates a number of targeted initiatives. We also fund an organisation called AHEAD, which has a specific mandate to promote participation in third level by students with physical disabilities and, as Mr. McDonagh said, the newly established national office is being moved to the HEA. We have commissioned a number of publications and studies, including the Clancy and Skilbeck studies. The Clancy studies are interesting because Ireland is unique among most OECD countries in having a longitudinal study which tracks progress over a 20 year period.
The next chart breaks down Higher Education Authority expenditure over the last six-year period by target group. Total expenditure was €26.4 million over that period. The next list gives an indication of the measures the Higher Education Authority has funded. Interestingly, two years ago, the authority became concerned that these specific activities in the universities were unduly dependent on the targeted funding which was being given by the Higher Education Authority because most of our funding goes through the block-grant mechanism which, under the autonomy provisions in the Universities Act, gives the universities complete discretion in terms of expenditure of funding. We now require the universities to complement our funding with funding from their own resources which they have been doing in the last round of targeted initiatives which has been encouraging.
On the slide entitled "AHEAD survey", there are a number of bullets which refer to a doubling in the participation rate of students with physical disabilities at third level since 1994, but notwithstanding that, these students are still under-represented in the overall student population. There has been a significant increase in the numbers of students with specific learning difficulties and, surprisingly, certain areas of disability are particularly under-represented - students with hearing and sight difficulties. The next slide illustrates some specific measures which the Higher Education Authority has funded. Mr. McDonagh touched on the importance of completion. Entry to third level is one issue but completion is another. There is a concern that there may be variable completion rates dependent on socio-economic class. We do not have much data on that. The next chart is taken from a HEA-commissioned survey on non-completion in undergraduate university courses. At an overall level, the results are encouraging. Ireland is in second place internationally in terms of the proportion of students who enter third level and complete it. We know that there are specific course areas where the completion rates are lower.
The Higher Education Authority is continuing to give attention to this area. It is funding a number of initiatives in the universities, including research into the reasons for completion, the appointment of retention officers by the universities, the development of tutoring, mentoring and peer support services and counselling services and advice on strategies. Of course, in our work we are collaborating with a number of other organisations - the newly-established National Qualifications Authority of Ireland, the National Adult Learning Council and the Education Disadvantage Committee.
I mentioned that we were about to take a further significant step in terms of the HEA's role in encouraging the universities to develop and implement their equality policies. We have a role, assigned to us in the Universities Act, which requires us to monitor progress, to advise and assist the universities and to foster a supportive climate and commitment. The Higher Education Authority has broken this down into a five stage process. The first stage consists of an institutional self-evaluation by the university of it equality policies. That stage has been completed and we have received the institutional self-evaluations from all of the seven universities. The next stage is the appointment of a review team. We will be announcing later today the appointment of that review team which will be chaired by Mr. Maurice O'Connell who will be known to most members as the recently-retired governor of the Central Bank. Four experts from Ireland and abroad will assist him. This team, which is independent of the HEA, will review the institutional reports and will make recommendations and report to the Higher Education Authority following which the Higher Education Authority has the authority to prepare and publish its own report.
I will now address the Higher Education Authority proposals in regard to the national office for equity of access to higher education. The essential objectives of this office will be to develop policy and co-ordinate funding between the different agencies, to monitor implementation and to carry out evaluation. The office will target the various so-called equity groups. The McNamara report which recommended the establishment of this office called for a number of dedicated funding streams for different areas, particularly the co-ordination of approaches by all funding agencies and providers. To date, the Higher Education Authority has taken a very hands-off approach to co-ordination - and that was deliberately so. As in many other countries we wanted to encourage experimentation and the development of new programmes but the point comes when there are disparities in terms of the application of the various experimental programmes and there was a growing concern that some of these disparities were unintentionally creating obstacles and difficulties for some students. Following a review of the target initiatives we feel the time is now approaching for a more co-ordinated approach and the establishment of a national framework. The Minister, as the committee knows, has announced the establishment of the office, the Higher Education Authority is proceeding to establish it and, in fact, we have advertised three senior posts. We look forward to this important development in terms of the activities of the Higher Education Authority and we very much welcome the Minister's decision to assign this responsibility to the HEA.
The area of a policy framework draws heavily on the international survey work which was carried out by Professor Skilbeck. It is vital that the task of achieving equality in higher education is one which enables the institutions to achieve equality. Structured change takes time and that is not an excuse for inaction - far from it. The influences of wider society are hugely important in meeting the challenges of promoting access and as Mr. McDonagh has said, so are the successes of policies at earlier stages of education. None of these are excuses and Professor Skilbeck in the final paragraphs of his report - and we have taken extracts of these in the last two slides - identifies who should do this. In fact, nobody escapes his finger. Individual teachers and researchers have a responsibility. It is not good enough for a lecturer in chemistry to say his or her job is to lecture in chemistry, he or she also has to be concerned about the over-arching socio-economic imperatives. Institutional administrators and leaders have their roles, as has organisations such as the HEA. It is for public authorities and Governments to provide the resources and ensure that necessary policies and frameworks are in place.