JOINT COMMITTEE ON JOBS, SOCIAL PROTECTION AND EDUCATION díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 4 Oct 2011

Third Level Reform: Discussion with Irish Universities Association and Institutes of Technology Ireland

Chairman

At this meeting, we will have a discussion with the Irish Universities Association and the Institutes of Technology Ireland on the possible reform of the third level entrance system and the need to ensure a better skills match between industry needs and third level graduates. I welcome the following: Mr. Ned Costello, chief executive of the Irish Universities Association; Professor Linda Hogan, vice provost and chief academic officer of Trinity College Dublin; Professor Anne Scott, deputy president and registrar at Dublin City University; and Mr. Lewis Purser, director of academic affairs at the Irish Universities Association. From the Institutes of Technology Ireland, I welcome Dr. Brendan Murphy, president of the Cork Institute of Technology and chairman of the Institutes of Technology Ireland; Mr. Pat McLaughlin, president of the Institute of Technology Tallaght; Dr. Annie Doona, president of the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dún Laoghaire; and Mr. Gerry Murray, chief executive officer of the Institutes of Technology Ireland.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that members should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. By virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence you are to give this committee. If you are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence in relation to a particular matter and you continue to so do, you are entitled thereafter only to a qualified privilege in respect of your evidence. You are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and you are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, you should not criticise nor make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable.

I invite Mr. Costello to make a presentation on possible reform of the third level entrance system and the need to ensure a better skills match between industry needs and third level graduates.

Mr. Ned Costello

On behalf of the IUA, I welcome the opportunity to address the committee on these matters. On the possible reform of the third level entrance system and the leaving certificate, our submission contains the text of a report prepared by a multidisciplinary working group for the IUA council on this topic. The group included representation from the universities, Dublin Institute of Technology, IBEC, the ESRI and the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, NAPD. The report was presented at the recent joint NCCA-HEA conference on transition. Central to the report, and consistent with the discussion at the conference, is the need for reform of second level - the leaving certificate examination in particular - and of the third level admissions system to co-evolve.

What emerged at the conference and in our report is a strong sense that the structure of the leaving certificate exam and its marking system is driving teaching and learning behaviours at second level in a negative way. However, there are also concerns about the so-called backwash effect of the points system on second level. In that regard, our working group developed an extensive set of options for change and situated these on a line of connectedness to the leaving certificate. I will not go through all of these in the time available but will mention some key categories that are expanded upon in the report. The categories include supplementary tests and portfolios, etc., less granularity in points and the use of random selection, and threshold entry systems coupled with broader first year curricula, with specialisation moving to the second year of university. The universities are now in a process of exploring these options more thoroughly and testing their feasibility. We would be happy to discuss these matters in more detail with the committee.

I will now address the matter of the skills match between industry needs and graduates. I will cover the spectrum of university graduates from NFQ levels 8 to 10, from honours bachelor degree to PhD. The fundamental purpose of a university education has not changed in the sense that it is a preparation for life. University education aims to develop rounded individuals who have domain-specific knowledge that is complemented by broader skills such as critical thinking, teamworking and communication. Critically, we aim to inculcate in students an aspiration towards the achievement of excellence. This is the vital core quality employers seek of our graduates.

University education also aims to produce people with the skills to be lifelong learners - the most important learning of all, according to renowned educationalist John Dewey. This has become ever more critical because the pace of change is continually accelerating and, as a result, the pace at which today's industry skills needs become obsolete is quickening all the time. Therefore, it is essential we have people who are strong in their discipline but also widely skilled and capable of adapting to new learning and employment opportunities as the specific needs of the labour market evolve.

In terms of the composition of provision of university education, health and professional degrees such as law and accounting, but also including engineering, make up a large proportion of third level enrolments. There is a direct connection between the syllabus in these areas and the requirements of professional regulatory bodies. However, even outside these specific areas there is a high level of interaction between the universities and enterprise in informing curriculum development. Our background material provides examples of this. Greater emphasis is being placed on the broad attributes of graduates, with DCU's Generation 21 initiative being a good example of this. We also include in our submission details of UCC's overall approach to skills development, with reference to the important area of study abroad.

In terms of the structure of the curriculum, modularisation has been a key development. In this context, modularisation has two important effects. First, it allows for greater multidisciplinarity. UCD's Horizons programme is a specific example of this but the approach is widespread across the sector. The aim is to produce more rounded graduates by allowing students to move, in ways that suit each learner's own interests and ambitions, beyond the specific disciplinary focus of the degree. Second, it allows a more mobile curriculum where modules can be and are frequently updated, in many cases annually, to reflect changes in knowledge arising from research or developments in industry. Employability skills are significantly enhanced by providing opportunities for placements in industry and for community engagement by students. Such placements and engagement are a prominent and growing feature of university education. We have included some examples of NUIG's approach to engagement in our submission, while Professor Scott can talk about DCU's INTRA programme.

Research activity is having an increasing influence on university education. At fourth level, Ireland has become a leader in the area of structured PhDs, which are situated within graduate schools, and aims to maintain the core of the research-based PhD but supplement it with other skills relevant to employability in the wider economy. This is important because the whole strategy for science technology and innovation is predicated not purely on producing PhDs for academia but also for industry. The principles behind our structured PhDs are reflected in the principles of innovative doctoral training included in the new EU strategy entitled Supporting Jobs and Growth - an agenda for the modernisation of Europe's higher education systems.

Research is also a source of spin-offs from universities, leading to companies that come directly out of university research activity. In this way, research directly provides the skills for new employment creation. The expansion of research has also greatly strengthened the overall ethos and relationship between industry and the universities in the sense that collaborative programmes such as the SFI centres for science, technology and innovation and the Enterprise Ireland innovation partnerships have deepened our understanding of industry needs. Universities are also taking initiatives to promote entrepreneurship, for example, Trinity College and UCD's shared innovation academy and UCC's ignite programme.

To deepen our interaction with enterprise, the IUA has established a new university-industry round table. This will be a regular forum involving the university presidents and CEOs of leading Irish companies. The first session of the round table takes place tomorrow morning and it is intended there will regular interaction thereafter. At the session, we will discuss issues relating to the learning environment and the broader environment within which universities operate.

To conclude, I would like to mention the work undertaken by the expert skills group. The group undertakes studies and makes recommendations relating to specific sectoral skills issues and also undertakes a valuable role in providing intelligence on overall skills gaps in the economy. I have added to our submission some detailed information on skills gaps at a sectoral level. Some important points emerge from that data. First, the sectors showing vacancies are predominantly the high-tech sectors. Second, with the exception of the ICT industry, the level of vacancies is low.

This reflects the state of the economy. However, given that the export sector is performing strongly in GDP terms, this suggests that by and large skills needs are being met. This conclusion is consistent with external assessments such as that of ECOFIN and employer surveys underpinning the university rankings. Despite the fact that some universities fell in the recent rankings, the employer feedback element held up remarkably well and improved in some cases.

However, as well as responding to immediate skills shortages, we also need to look to the future and to play to our strengths not only in the technology area but also in the areas of arts and culture, which have significant economic potential. Indeed, emerging evidence on competitiveness suggests that the most competitive regions are those which are creatively strong across all these domains. By continuing to expand our links with enterprise to widely inform the delivery of an excellent education for rounded, employable people, we can accelerate growth and recovery from the present crisis - a goal to which we are fully committed.

Thank you. We look forward to discussing these matters with the committee.

Chairman

Thank you. We will now take Dr. Murphy's submission.

Dr. Brendan Murphy

I thank the committee for the invitation to discuss the important issues of the entry mechanisms to higher education and the need to ensure a better skills match between industry needs and third level graduates. We have provided written submissions on both topics, so in this short statement I propose to highlight some key themes.

With regard to the possible reform of the third level entrance system, our submission cautions against an over-emphasis on the CAO system when there are now many ways through which students enter the higher education system. Indeed, the likelihood is that as the system continues to develop, the percentage of people entering higher education other than through the CAO system will continue to grow. We also share the Minister's stated view that the points system is objective and transparent, but it has unintended consequences. The committee will be aware that Professor Áine Hyland prepared a discussion paper entitled Entry to Higher Education in Ireland in the 21st Century, in advance of a conference on the topic just a fortnight ago. In response to a request from the Department of Education and Skills in May this year, the institutes of technology registrars undertook their own examination of the entrance system and their conclusions are broadly similar to those that emerged in Professor Hyland's paper.

The points system has come in for significant attention and criticism lately. We said in our written submission that with few exceptions, people entering the higher education system with high points will be successful in all higher education programmes. Again with few exceptions, people on low points will struggle and either drop out or fail. There is, however, a vast middle ground where predictions are much more difficult. It is our view that a coherent and vibrant further education sector that could draw students who would traditionally have gone directly to higher education and encountered difficulties progressing would be a very welcome development as a bridge between second level and higher education. We believe also that given the importance of literacy and numeracy, there is a case for including leaving certificate results in English and mathematics in the calculation of points for entry into all higher education programmes.

Striving to maximise points results in students entering programmes at higher education with inadequate preparation in underpinning principles or competencies in cognate areas. We would like to draw the attention of the committee to the requirement in the international baccalaureate for students to take subjects across six different groups: native language, additional language, experimental sciences, mathematics, arts and social sciences. We suggest that either requiring all students at leaving certificate level to choose a subject from each of these or similar categories or requiring an innovative linking of higher education discipline choice to appropriate studies at leaving certificate level would lead to a better handshake between second level exit and third level entry.

In addition, we propose that consideration be given to considerably lengthening the academic year, particularly for first year higher education students, to help in their assimilation into higher education and thereby reduce the pressure on the students and the lecturers. It always seems churlish that it is expected that all the solutions should be at second level and that none should be proposed at third level.

I would now like to turn to the question of ensuring a better skills match between industry needs and third level graduates. When a programme in an institute of technology is being designed, stakeholders from industry and commerce provide input into the curriculum design process and the course content. Furthermore, our system of external quality assurance and programme review utilises panels of external experts, which must include industry experts. Many of our academic staff have industry experience along with academic and professional qualifications. This adds to the store of our knowledge on industry skills needs. We strongly value job placement opportunities and internships, as they not only enrich our programmes and students but also give employers opportunities to assess potential employees.

Throughout the 14 institutes of technology, there are countless examples of bespoke programmes for upskilling for particular industries and cases of the sector bringing programmes directly to the workplace. The BlueBrick.ie project is a recent highly successful project aimed at enhancing skills for employment. The project REAP, the roadmap for employer academic partnerships, has been chosen as a model of good practice by the EU directorate general of culture and education. The REAP project has resulted in real change and reform within the higher education institutions in the way in which the full range of engagement activities is supported and developed. A key initiative of the project has been the development of professional outward facing centres to support all forms of engagement, examples of which include the work-based learning and engagement office in Athlone Institute of Technology, in my institution, the CIT extended campus, the corporate partnership network in DIT, enterprise, support and engagement in WIT and the create-start-up enterprise platform programme in the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dún Laoghaire.

Significant attention has been paid to unfilled vacancies in the ICT sector and the resulting need to import skills for that sector. It is unquestionable that in 2002 the dotcom collapse frightened students away from ICT higher education programmes. That trend has now reversed. However, there is a time lag between students coming into the system and meeting the needs of industry.

I will conclude by stating that we need to know how business and industry view our higher education system. To this end, the universities and institutions of technology are working with the private sector on the development of a comprehensive employers' survey. We expect to pilot the survey next year, before continuing to apply it on a regular basis. We are happy to respond to any questions the committee may have.

Chairman

I thank Dr. Murphy and the delegates for their submission.

Senator Averil Power

I thank Dr. Murphy and Mr. Costello for their presentation. There is no doubt that change is needed at both second and third level education. The committee is dealing with the third level sector today but we have already had some discussions with departmental officials regarding second level. It is a positive sign to have representatives from both the universities and the institutes of technology here together in such significant numbers and who are willing to answer our questions.

I acknowledge the positive developments in the provision of supplementary routes to higher education for mature students and those with disabilities. However, these are often not acknowledged because we tend to focus a little too much on second level education. I commend the institutions for their work over the past ten years. The main topic of today's meeting is to examine the CAO system and the effect of competition for the high points courses upon the whole educational system.

I have read both submissions which are excellent. I refer to some of the options for change. As regards the common or generic first year, the IOTI solution is quite strong on pointing out concerns about some aspects, including some professional courses. Is there general agreement among the institutes of technology that provision could be made to provide a common first year for other courses? The Irish Universities Association submission is largely silent on that issue. It mentions a common first year as an option but so far as I can tell from reading the submission it does not make a definite choice one way or the other. The submission neither expresses any concerns nor embraces the idea nor describes what level of discussions have taken place.

A generic first year could be a very positive development. It would help people who are effectively killing themselves to achieve sufficient points for medicine or law and other such courses with the resultant pressure which is generated throughout the system. It would also give students a better insight into their own aptitudes and interests so that they would be better equipped to choose a course most suited to them before they tie themselves to one particular course. There is much merit in such a system and it has worked successfully. A conference was held in UCD two weeks ago which described how the system has worked very well in the University of New South Wales. I would like to hear more feedback from the delegation about the discussions in the two sectors.

I am concerned about one aspect of third level entry which is supplementary testing. I can see that the significant emphasis on the leaving certificate as a terminal examination is not a good policy and there is scope at second level to have other forms of assessment where students are competing on the same playing field, so to speak. However, I am concerned about the addition of extra tests such as SATs or other aptitude tests because students can study in advance for these tests. I refer to the ESRI research done by Dr. Emer Smith which shows the social disparity between those who can take grinds and those who do not. This adds another element of advantage for those who can afford to pay for private weekend courses. I am a little concerned about any additional testing. I am very interested to hear the delegates' comments on the generic first year.

Professor Anne Scott

I will address the question about the generic first year. The options supplied in the submission are those options which each of the institutions is considering for its own use. We are in the relatively early stages of looking at the option across the sector. I will, therefore, be focused in my response as it applies to DCU.

Dublin City University has two areas where the experience is quite significant and positive. The faculty of science has a common entry level. Our five main science courses, including physics and right through to health and human performance, share a common first year, or at least, a common route, into those disciplines and a common entry into engineering. Some students are taken directly into the straight physics programme but a proportion of places are reserved for common entry students. This enables the students to have a bit more time to make a decision as to which area they wish to enter and also to get an in-depth taste of the science they may not have experienced in second level.

An issue which arose at the UCD conference is that this option places significant strain on the three-year programmes. DCU degree programmes are of four years' duration. This provides more flexibility to enable students gain a little extra leeway while achieving a common foundation level for certain science or engineering disciplines. In my view it would be very difficult, I suspect, to be able to include this much in a three-year programme. However, the system contains good examples. We could look at those students who have been tracked through common entry into the designated programmes to see how the system has worked from the perspective of the student and this information could inform the discussion.

Dr. Annie Doona

The idea of the generic first year is aimed at solving two problems, the first being the issue of student choice. Students are asked to make decisions and choices at a very young age and they are also asked to make a large number of choices in the CAO system. Students will usually know the area, such as the arts or science, in which their interest lies and therefore it is advisable to make the first year as generic as possible. This option enables them to fine-tune their choice as they progress. Towards the end of that generic first year, they are beginning to specialise in subjects and this means every student's skills and special interests are being addressed as part of that first year programme. It might be useful if they begin in the generic course and in the second semester or the third term move towards more specialised subjects.

The institutes of technology are interested in exploring in that first year the development of employable skills and skills which provide a transition from second to third level. We refer in our submission about the skills of creativity, innovation, problem-solving and applied knowledge. Part of the idea of a generic first year is also to use that time to develop those kind of skills that make the transition easier. We described in our paper the notion of an extended year, particularly for first years, so that more time could be devoted to what is for some students that very difficult transition period. They could thus begin to learn the skills which employers tell us they want.

Dr. Brendan Murphy

We echo what was said about the shorter cycle programmes, in the two-year or three-year programmes, which produce a substantial number of graduates and these are graduates for industry. Something gives if the short cycle is made more generic. Inevitably, these programmes will be lengthened as a result and if they expand to more than one or two modules, then an additional year is required and this is an additional cost to the student and to the State. For instance, a two-year programme could quite rapidly become a three-year programme and a three-year programme become a four-year programme. This has happened in the area of engineering where the professional body has driven the requirement for chartered status in engineering. Now, for all intents and purposes, a five-year programme is required in order to become a chartered engineer. This is the inherent danger.

As regards my own institution, our four-year engineering programmes offer common engineering entry and we also offer common science entry. It is interesting to note that this is not a popular choice among students. It is usually a lower points course in the CAO and it is an easier way into engineering but it is not a popular choice. Students vote with their feet and they prefer the denominated entry into a specific engineering or science discipline. We have no inherent objection to a common first year entry course but we are studying the cost and what would be involved. It would delay making a choice by six months. Will this better inform the person? Of course, some of these choices are made in secondary school anyway because of having taken subjects which minimise choices.

Professor Linda Hogan

I echo what Professor Scott stated at the beginning, which is that the universities have mentioned this option but no extensive discussion has taken place in the particular universities on a generic first year or a first year during which generic skills are prioritised. Even in Trinity College, which has four year programmes and where our denominated courses are very popular, the approach we would like to take is to develop generic skills throughout the curriculum and not only in first year. Generic skills such as communications must be taught and learned throughout, and we do not see them as something to be done exclusively or primarily in the first year. With regard to getting a balance with in-depth knowledge of one's subject area, whether in a two subject or single subject degree, it is important not to lose the degree of depth that subject areas can attain for their graduates when they are focused on it from the first year all the way through.

Many of the skills that students need to learn, in terms of transition from second level to third level and generic skills, can be taught through educational supports that run parallel with degree programmes. These supports include peer-to-peer learning, maths support clubs and language learning. From our point of view, while we think generic skills are absolutely critical, we would be slow to rush to the idea of a generic first year because we would be fearful that we would lose the depth of the knowledge and understanding that students gain as they go through a degree programme. It is important to balance this, particularly if the third level sector is focused on master's degrees and PhD attainment. We must ensure our level of attainment at primary degree level is excellent.

Senator Averil Power

I agree with the need for skills to be taught throughout a course. Regardless of what course is being studied, modules such as entrepreneurship and communications should be included. A question was asked on whether the universities have come to an agreement on a generic first year and it is evident that meaty discussions on it have not taken place and that the paper was more about setting out options as opposed to the result of great discussions. Do the universities intend to have discussions on it? It would be interesting to see a consolidated response from the sector to the idea of a generic first year, whether positive or negative.

I accept there may be a cost because it may be necessary to lengthen some courses. However, an inherent cost to the State and the individual is built into the system because some courses have very high dropout rates. Is it possible for this to be mitigated by a generic first year? It may cost more but people will end up going in the right direction rather than dropping out because they find courses unsuitable, or completing a degree and deciding they do not want to work in the area because they were never interested in it and merely went through the motions. Do the universities intend to write a joint paper setting out their approach to the idea of a generic first year?

Deputy Tom Fleming

The emphasis on lifelong learning is very positive. However, a problem exists, because the universities are less accessible to part-time or evening students. For example, someone who wants to study law must go to one of the law colleges. We must examine ways to facilitate people to up-skill while remaining in work, as this will allow flexible lifelong learning. There is no incentive to remain in work and complete a degree part-time or in the evenings. There is no form of grant aid assistance or exemption from fees and this will have to be considered seriously.

The strong focus on industrial work placements is to be encouraged. University degrees are becoming more commonplace and what employers seek is experience, particularly hard-nosed experience. Graduates are considered in much the same way as they were 30 years ago, which is as coming straight out of college without being properly guided or given experience in industry. Industry-specific training is vital to make third level education relevant.

Modularisation, which allows students to use course credits from a wide range of disciplines, is also a positive step and is to be encouraged. The more disciplines students are allowed to try the better as it will give them a better idea about the career direction they will take at a later stage.

Mr. Ned Costello

I will respond to Senator Power and Professor Scott will answer Deputy Fleming's questions.

To put this in context, the Minister asked for a response from the universities in a tight timeframe leading up to the conference and it was important that the response be received for the conference. The time involved did not allow in-depth probing of the feasibility or the balance between the various options we set out. The working group took a very specific decision to try to put down as many options as possible, which obviously means they need to be sifted and analysed, and this is the process in which the sector is now involved. Further detailed consideration will take place followed by a response, which will not be simply laying out the options but will be a consideration of what should be done.

I will comment briefly on the generic first year. This is not to be negative about it, but we point out in the paper that it moves making a choice from leaving certificate to the end of first year in university. It does not remove the pressure of making a choice completely. However, it allows one to be subject to the more extensive range of assessment mechanisms in university. Without wishing to return to discussing second level, there is an argument that if more continuous assessment, which is being introduced at junior certificate level, existed at leaving certificate level some of the pressures would not exist and therefore the decision may not need to be moved to third level at all. This needs to be part of the debate.

Dr. Brendan Murphy

On the question of having a joint position, all higher education institutions would be very conscious that students must not be expected to navigate their way through a system with 23 publicly funded bodies with different entry requirements. As with the matter of bonus points for maths, although all are autonomous bodies they accepted coming together to provide one solution so that students could navigate their way through the system. We must remember that the learner is supposed to be at the centre. I can speak only for ourselves, but all of my colleagues would be very conscious that if a decision was made on generic programmes it would be a higher education institution-wide decision, and this is with respect to every institution's autonomy. One must look at it from the point of view of the student trying to navigate the system.

With regard to Deputy Fleming's question on grant aid for part-time education, for the first time the Higher Education Authority has changed the funding model for higher education institutions this calendar year. We are funded on a credit basis, so a distinction is not made between full-time and part-time students. Rather, it has to do with how many credits each student undertakes. I accept that full-time students have free fees, as they are affectionately known, whereas part-time students must still pay them. However, the funding reform is a step towards the recommendation in the national strategy.

Professor Anne Scott

I will address a couple of issues before answering Deputy Fleming's question. We must be careful to understand the information that is available on the drop-out rate. Our third level sector has one of the best retention rates in Europe. The one area in which we experience significant problems is ICT. This was confirmed as recently as last year through the HEA report. We should recognise that in many ways the sector constitutes an exceptionally good story in terms of retention. The drop-out rate in ICT is of concern and is directly linked with mathematics performance. We have exceptionally low drop-out rates in the health sciences, medicine and many professional disciplines. The rate begins to creep up from almost 0.5% to 10% in some other disciplines. This is a high retention rate internationally.

Regarding Deputy Fleming's question, I support Dr. Murphy's comments. The Hunt report underlines the fact that we need to equalise the playing field. The HEA is funding on a credit basis, which should provide some support. As the sector comes to terms with the need to grow the mature student population in particular, it must recognise that most mature students are not necessarily interested in full-time face-to-face programmes on a continual basis. They may wish to move between full-time face-to-face, part-time face-to-face and online programmes. Each of the institutions is moving ahead in this regard. For example, well over 2,500 students of DCU's 11,000 population are in online-part-time mode, which is a decent performance nationally.

Quite a bit of evidence provides international recognition and evidence of the fact that Irish graduates are extremely employable. Our sector has done well in meeting the needs of employers. Last year's ECOFIN report put Ireland first out of 28 countries in terms of our graduates' employability. There is always room for improvement, but we should recognise how effective the sector has been.

The pack supplied to members contains information on my institution, which has used work experience placements as part of its undergraduate degree programmes since its inception. Nursing and teaching accounts for approximately 500 students. Excluding them, we placed 800 students with nearly 900 companies last year. These placements lasted from two months to 12 months, depending on the programme. Including our professional programmes, 36 or 37 of our 50 programmes involve work placements in approximately 1,000 different companies. It is just one of many examples across the sector of this type of engagement. Unlike many European systems, the Irish system involves a close interaction between third level programmes and the business sector.

Mr. Pat McLoughlin

The idea of a common first year merits strong discussion within the sector's institutions, but it would not be a trivial change to a particular programme and would need to balance the needs of a variety of stakeholders, including students, employers, professional bodies and the institutes. A reconfiguration would be required. It would not be suitable for all programmes. It is a question of creating space early on, that is, developing depth rather than breadth through the current model from the inception stage. We would be getting into discipline-specific teaching straight away.

The idea has significant value, in that it has the potential to develop the ability of students to learn. They would be learning to learn. The benefit in first year would be broader and could then be applied in developing depth more quickly than is allowed for under the current model. It merits serious consideration.

Reverting to the issue of lifelong learning, industry cannot wait for our graduate output. The workforce in industry requires its skill-set and knowledge base to be developed regularly. Through a variety of interactions, both sectors have engaged with industry. It is a key requirement that we respond to the skills and knowledge needs of industry, be it for multinationals or, more importantly, indigenous small to medium-sized enterprises, SMEs. Our sector has a long tradition of responding quickly to and facilitating the needs of industry. We will leave the campus and deliver programmes in industry that have been customised for particular companies to meet specific needs. Industry can understandably be more focused on the training end of the spectrum as opposed to the broader educational end. We wrap what we do with industry in a broad, value-added educational qualification while meeting a company's specific needs and skill set requirements.

Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin

I thank the witnesses for their interesting presentations. The points system is horrendous, as it kills creativity, abolishes all need for independent thought and has created a scenario in second level schools whereby people scramble around for the requisite points to enter into whatever third level courses they want. Students are pressured by parents and teachers to get grinds, eat up notes and spit them out onto a page. However, the system is fair, transparent and trusted. In a country like Ireland where there is a whiff of corruption around pretty much everything, it is nice to know that we have a system in which people have faith. The 1999 points commission was referred to, but it did not devise an option that was viable at the time. If we are to change the system, can we be sure that people's faith in it will be retained? Will the witnesses expand on the suggestion that, in terms of literacy and numeracy, English and mathematics should be mandatory for the calculation of points and qualification for third level?

Professor Scott asked about ICT in third level. I would be interested in hearing more on this matter, as I have strong opinions on the level of technology and science tuition in primary school teaching colleges. That level may have changed since I attended college, but not radically so. Heavy emphasis is placed on Irish and religion much to the detriment of English and science. Will the witnesses comment on this matter?

Professor Linda Hogan

I wish to comment on the question of whether the CAO is fair and transparent and if there is an alternative system. It is certainly transparent. It is fair within certain constraints, that is, it is fair if one can access grinds and supports. It seems to replicate and reinforce some of the advantages which already exist in the system. I have studied the issue and in terms of alternative models, a critical question is the form of assessments in place at second level which are then counted as student achievements. The Deputy is correct that the leaving certificate is a memory test of rote learning. We must ensure that the assessments at second level are assessing those kinds of things we know are necessary for achievement at third level and are exactly those skills that employers prize very highly, such as critical analysis, interpretation, reflective skills, creativity, problem-solving and communications skills.

These skills are not assessed at second level in the leaving certificate. We have to find a system whereby those critical skills are to the fore in the assessment process. We must find a system to then map these achievements onto a points or an entry system and this is almost a technical question. However, unless assessment is carried out at second level of those factors which point to future achievement at third level, then whatever system is in place will leave us with the same problems.

Professor Anne Scott

I will comment further on this topic and then address the question on ICT. Society needs to recognise that entry mechanisms into third level programmes operate as rationing gate-keepers. There has been a very high growth in third level places over the past ten years in particular and beginning in the 1980s. It has been a phenomenal growth year on year and decade on decade. As is described in the report produced by the IUA for the transition conference, Ireland is in quite a unique position in Europe in that a very high proportion of our second level school leavers expect to go to third level. Therefore, as the population grows - we are expecting a bulge coming through second level and into third level - the pressure on places becomes almost indescribable. Even if we were to continue to grow at 10% per year over the next ten years, we will not keep up with the demand. We have to have some rationing system and this is the simple part; the more difficult part, as Professor Hogan has indicated, is how the exit from second level is matched with third level entry requirements.

Unfortunately, I do not think we have come up with any best international model. There may be less effective, less useful, less fair and less transparent models but we have not come up with one really good model. This is, in essence, the reason the transition paper suggested we should stop looking for a single mechanism but rather that we should consider a combination of mechanisms.

The sector is very happy to work together. As Dr. Murphy has indicated, we have worked together on the question of bonus points. More important, one of the points raised at the transition conference was our willingness and keenness to work with our colleagues in the second level sector. We all want an educated population and an effective second level curriculum and assessment system in particular. What came through in the UCD conference was that people were not necessarily worried about the second level curriculum but they were very worried about the terminal examination assessment system.

As a society, as workers in the third level sector and as future recipients of health care and all sorts of other things, we all want a well-educated, competent population. It behoves us to work together and possibly for the first time in a considerable period, everybody is ready to do so. Part of this working together will require public re-education. Just because something is trusted does not mean it is necessarily the best option and this is a societal discussion which will be required.

As to the comment about ICT, I come from two different evidence bases. The report produced by the HEA last year showed the progression rates from year 1 to year 2 in ICT subjects, the rates for completing computer applications and software engineering. This area has one of the highest drop-out rates nationally. Some of the third level university programmes have quite worrying drop-out rates, at perhaps 25%. DCU has a very large school of computing and its flagship degree for many years was a very large computer applications degree. Following the dotcom burst, we saw a significant drop in demand for places. DCU normally had an intake of approximately 300 students but the demand collapsed, as did the academic performance of the students coming through from the leaving certificate.

Instead of automatically assuming one would have students with in excess of 450 points coming into this programme, we began to see students with 320 or 340 points. These students did not always have either honours maths or an A or B in ordinary level mathematics. We began an analysis to see if this was linked with overall leaving certificate performance or whether it was directly linked to any particular subject. Following a number of years of analysis, there emerged a clear correlation with performance in leaving certificate mathematics and progression success in the computing degree. I join with the national concern about mathematics and science teaching in general.

The comment about the primary curriculum would have been warranted about ten years ago. My own children started primary school in Scotland and when we moved to Ireland we discovered that my older son did not study any science until he left primary school whereas it had been part of the curriculum in Scotland from primary year 1. The primary level curriculum has changed but we still have an issue to address. If the Irish system is compared with the Scottish system which is a relatively comparable system at both primary and second level, and if one compares the first four choices for honours level subjects among males and females doing the Scottish higher examinations and the Irish leaving certificate, there is a very different pattern of subject choice. Both male and female students within the Scottish higher system will have both mathematics and a science subject in those first four most popular choices. This is not the case in the Irish system, particularly among female students. Fewer girls take honours maths or physics and chemistry in particular. Those subjects do not drop outside the top ten choices but they certainly drop down to the sixth, seventh or potentially eighth choice.

Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin

Is this a result of having single gender schools?

Professor Anne Scott

Not necessarily. There may be a link in some places with the provision of honours maths classes but this has decreased as an issue and it is not necessarily the reason. It may be to do with the approach used in teaching mathematics. For example, the Scottish primary system was cited as a European model system in the ten years I lived in Scotland and many of the Scandinavian countries came to Scotland to see how primary level mathematics or science were taught in the Scottish primary system. Even though the situation has improved and the curriculum has placed more emphasis on science in the primary curriculum now than ten years ago, we still have a way to go in that regard.

Dr. Annie Doona

I agree with Professor Hogan that while the current system is transparent and understood it certainly could not be accused of being completely fair. There needs to be a debate about continuous assessment and project work. However, we can take action in the short term as regards the final examination. My daughter has just completed the junior certificate and I know that the same questions come up year on year at junior certificate and leaving certificate and one can almost predict when a question is due to come up. A change could be made in quite a short period, and soon, in the questions and the problem-solving aspects of the final examination.

I wish to make a point about further education. The point was made that the higher education system is becoming very large and that there is a massification of education, but it seems that in Ireland we do not seem to have considered the further education option as a viable alternative. We talk about PLCs and we talk about further education as being PLCs. The leaving certificate has become the gold standard, but I feel we need a serious debate on the role of further education. What is the role for those students aged 15 or 16 who are not doing very well in school? Is there a way that further education and the kinds of programmes that can be developed in that area can be seen as a viable option?

We have also talked about further education as a bridge between second level and higher education. That notion of a bridge is unhelpful because further education needs to be developed as a sector in itself that provides a level of programmes that are viable and meet industry needs. It might sound strange to say that, but it might be a better option for a number of students than going into higher education and dropping out of programmes, as currently happens.

Chairman

If it is all right with witnesses, we will bank some questions so that we can get through our programme. I will call Deputy Lyons, followed by Deputy Barrett.

Deputy John Lyons

I thank the many witnesses who are here. Due to the fact there are so many of them, it takes a long time to provide a response. I agree fully with Professor Scott who said earlier that there is always room for improvement and always ways of doing things better. I commend DCU on its generation 21 initiative. I was clued in on this before it was launched and I understand DCU has revamped most of its modules, equipped students with an e-portfolio and is developing the types of attributes it believes will make students more employable and more in line with the employment available.

I wish to put my question to everybody else here. I know people are doing things in their own way, but what DCU has done is good practice. Perhaps there are better ways of doing it, but I do not know of them. Perhaps the university and technology sector here may not be able to respond on this practice, but it is something that is important to do. The DCU approach acknowledges that we need to push the types of skills that ensure we have a more rounded and employable person and that these skills are in line with what students do at college. Where do the other universities stand in comparison to what DCU has done? If they have not done the same, why not and do they intend to do it?

I have a concern with regard to the institutes of technology proposals on literacy and numeracy. Although I commend the fact that the institutes are looking for a solution with regard to access to third level, I am unsure what exactly is involved with regard to the points they wish to allocate for those who score well in English or maths. People from disadvantaged areas tend to do worse in English and maths, yet I am aware that people who have gone through access programmes have done well. I know about DCU's access programme because it is in my constituency and it has a high success rate for students who go through the programme. Many students achieve above average results, yet some of them would have struggled at school. The excellent results are possibly to do with the resources put in to catch those students and prevent them falling through the net. I am somewhat scared and concerned about the direction being taken regarding the proposals on literacy and numeracy and the weighting of points in that regard, because this affects some people. We already know that people from less well-off areas are all too under-represented at third level.

Witnesses may not be able to answer my final question today, but I would be more than happy if somebody could give me an answer. Secondary school teachers must have a professional qualification in order to teach. This is crucial. Anecdotally, many teachers say the higher diploma was nothing. It was everything to me because it gave me the theory and practice behind how to bring about the learning process. I am not sure what the position is at third level with regard to professional qualifications for teaching. I do not imply in any way that the quality of teaching and learning at third level needs to be questioned. I am curious whether, since secondary teachers must obtain a professional qualification in order to become teachers, third level staff must do the same. What is the position on that? People often think that because universities close from May until October some people are not working. I know some university lecturers work 24-7 and work really hard and would not like to create a false picture. I know of many who answer calls and e-mails from students at any time, even after midnight and at any time of the year.

My main question concerns DCU's generation 21 initiative. Where do the other groups stand in that regard?

Senator Sean D. Barrett

I thank the Chairman for facilitating me. I am a member of the Oireachtas Committee on Finance also, where the problems are far greater than those we are examining here. I also sit on the Trinity board representing the academic staff and was elected by Trinity graduates to the Seanad. However, two issues discussed here - extending the academic year and changing the points system - were never mentioned by either group to me, despite my being elected again in April this year to the board.

I said in the Seanad that I was quite surprised the points system conference was taking place as there had been no discussion of it by the board on which I sit. It has been the unfortunate trend in Irish higher education that the people at the top "know better than you what you should think and what you should do". There is student and staff representation on the board. However, the heads of the Irish universities are still what has become the Irish Universities Association. The name has been changed, but the practice has not. The heads should talk to people who give the lectures to 400 first year students in the Edmund Burke lecture hall. Then they might find out something that would be of value to them. This trend continues. There was no working lecturer or researcher on the Hunt committee, the innovation committee nor the smart economy committee. It is a bit like being employed by colonial governors. They see one there, but they only talk to other colonial governors. The heads of Irish universities must get real and get in touch with real students and academic staff.

I voted against bonus points for mathematics because they do nothing for the 80% of children who are taught mathematics by somebody without a qualification in the subject and reward those who went to a school with the one fifth of qualified maths teachers or who could afford grinds. The bonus points are a bogus solution. They let the universities off the hook and let them suggest the maths and education departments should get together to ensure a supply of adequately trained maths teachers. If there is consensus on bonus points, I was not part of that consensus.

We have a new provost and team in governance in Trinity College now and many of these issues will be discussed, probably for the first time. A strategic innovation fund spent €6 million changing the pieces on the draughts board or drawing lines on maps. Afterwards, a survey of the academic staff showed that one out of 181 thought he or she could do more research as a result of the expenditure of that €6 million. The obsession with administrative structures diverts money away from where it should be spent or from where we want it spent in education.

I caution also -----

Chairman

I ask the Senator to confine himself to questions if he can.

Senator Sean D. Barrett

Could these documents be sent to the governing bodies of universities before they are announced to the media? Could we have a proper discussion on mathematics? The Minister of State, Deputy Sherlock, has been given responsibility for this by the Minister. Bonus points are not the solution. I put it to our visitors that bonus points are a bogus solution to the problem of mathematics teaching in our schools.

Given that employment in industry has fallen by 53,000, from 287,000 to 234,000 since June 2005, allowing industrialists too much of a say in the running of Irish higher education could be ill advised. I would not want any bankers advising on economics courses, given the trouble they have got us into. Education must have some pride in itself.

Chairman

We might take up that in the second half.

Mr. Ned Costello

Deputy Lyons asked why every other institution is not like DCU.

Deputy John Lyons

On a serious note, there is much to be learned if we compare some universities but I will not identify them today. It is an important point.

Mr. Ned Costello

I would not trivialise it for a moment. Our submission tries to show that there is a huge variety of approaches to industry engagement across the sector. There is an important point about the need for diversity in higher education. There is widespread agreement that we do not want a higher education system that becomes completely homogenous and offers the same student experience to every student, regardless of the character of institution. While it is important that there is a high level of industry engagement and that we are following up with the presidents of universities and the chief executives of large and small major companies in Ireland, it is important that this is translated into something with colour and variety. We know that is what students want as well.

Deputy John Lyons

On the question of why every university is not the same as DCU, I am trying to refrain from mentioning any aspects of individual institutions but some have decided that stagnation rather than transition is the way to go. That is unacceptable in universities or institutes of technology. I gave an example of good practice and if we were to crawl through every corridor of most university sectors there are elements where there is room for improvement. That is the message I would like Mr. Costello to take home. I am not looking for a homogenous third level sector; I am looking for a vibrant third level sector that meets the demands of the students today. When I went to university, finishing in 1998, I had a fantastic experience but I do not know whether it equipped me to be employable in a transient world where one job is not a job forever. That is what I want to resonate from today's meeting. It would be unfair to say that everyone is trying different approaches. Aspects of our university and institute of technology sector are not meeting the need to change. The onus is on the team of people responsible for each of those universities to ensure we are delivering an up-to-date experience that will allow anyone who passes through those doors, whether on a full-time or part-time basis, the best opportunity to be employable in the future.

Mr. Ned Costello

We agree with that and it is the reason we are here today. Universities are constantly seeking to up their game.

Regarding access and Senator Barrett's reference to the strategic innovation fund, under that programme we completely transformed our access system and put in place the HEAR and DARE schemes for disadvantaged students and those with a disability. Senator Power made reference to this. This interfaces with the points system and is relevant to the question raised earlier about what we can do with the points system. We integrate in the HEAR and DARE schemes through the CAO system. One can still work with the points system and achieve some objectives. We know that, once such students get into college, if they have the appropriate support and access routes, they often do better than those who come through the mainstream points system. We are conscious of that.

I am not sure about the specific questions Senator Barrett raised. The Minister asked us to examine the points system and we are anxious to respond to requests from the Minister. While it might not have come up in the way the Senator mentioned it, the UCD conference was vastly oversubscribed and it was attended by several hundred people. From our participation in it, it was clear that it is a matter of major national importance and debate. That is why we are anxious to engage with it.

Professor Anne Scott

I will take up the question on maths and English. Our perception, as the HEA report indicates, is that there is a correlation between student performance in maths and English in the leaving certificate and the ability to perform and succeed at third level. I take the point about students from disadvantaged areas potentially underperforming in those areas but, potentially, the issue is much more serious than that. Many secondary schools must be challenged to have greater expectations for their students. Sometimes, in an attempt to get a set of excellent results, they stream the children very early. My daughter performed adequately at the junior certificate English and she got a C in the honours paper, then she took transition year, and found that the cut-off point in the school was determined as a B in the honours papers. There is no evidence base for that and no rationale. I would far prefer to see my daughter getting through honours English and passing it at the leaving certificate rather than trying to go for an A at ordinary level English. The level at which the child is stimulated to think and perform is very different and it sets up the children to be able to cope with third level rather than assuming they are not going to be able to manage it at 14 years of age. This is an important point.

Regarding the query on teaching qualifications, I come from an interesting stable on this. I was required by my professional body to have a teaching qualification before becoming an academic. I speak from a position of some knowledge on this topic. Most people who take most higher education courses will learn something from them and benefit from them. It is a myth to assume that, just because people have been through a teacher education programme, they will automatically become good teachers. Understanding of, and enthusiasm for, the subject is what makes one a good teacher. Nonetheless, the Hunt report begins to address this and we have a number of very good third level teacher preparation programmes. Some are established, as is the case in DIT or the universities that are providing upskilling programmes at graduate, diploma or masters level to provide people with the skills to engage with the digital generation. We were not necessarily purveyors of this. DCU has been working on a teaching quality enhancement scheme, which looks at how we can support staff, particularly those facing large numbers in lecture theatres. This was pointed out by Senator Barrett. We must consider how we can equip people to handle this and also to handle one-to-one interaction or small seminar groups. Universities are looking at this but we should learn from the experience in the UK, which is that if one requires this as a compulsory mechanism, people will pay lip service to it. We must urge people to engage in it because they want to do the job better and because we are looking at enhancement rather than compliance. We have a lesson to learn.

Regarding the bonus points, the new provost in Trinity was part of the registrar group we worked with and a decision on bonus points was not put through the sector until it had gone through all the academic councils. I can only vouch for the depth of discussion in my institution and it certainly happened.

Regarding industry engagement, we must be careful not to dichotomise and create schisms that do not need to exist. Industry, business and service are looking for exactly the kind of generic skills that makes someone succeed as a third level graduate. We are looking for an inquiring mind, skills and critical analysis and excellent judgment. We are looking for the ability to problem-solve, and we try to facilitate civic and global engagement. Mr. Donohoe from IBEC would recognise those skills just as I do. We need to be careful not to create false dichotomies.

Professor Linda Hogan

I would like to continue on that point. I agree with Professor Scott. It is important to be cognisant of the fact that the arts, humanities and culture are also very much part of the remit of universities and they are also part of the context in which we need to develop these entrepreneurial and innovative skills. In the submission I prepared, I wanted to stress that all of these issues are there for the arts and culture as well as for the STEM subjects. In Trinity College, not only do we try to ensure that students in science, technology and engineering undergo internships and engage with industry, but we also recognise that culture and the arts is where much of our national growth will come from. Rather than being exclusively focused on the classroom, students are also out learning about arts management in publishing companies, doing translation, working with digital humanities and so on. That is an important part of what will allow for economic regeneration in this country.

I have a final comment on the issue of teaching qualifications for third level. When I had my first academic post in the UK I was required to do a diploma in teaching and learning in higher education, which taught me a great deal. However, the university I was working in abandoned the compulsory element after about five years - precisely, as Professor Scott said, because it was a requirement rather than something people really believed they needed to do to enhance their teaching quality. Most universities now have extensive programmes for developing skills. That is critical for the quality of the student experience. I absolutely endorse what Deputy Lyons said.

Dr. Annie Doona

I have another follow-on to that. Deputy Lyons's comment has aroused a lot of interest. I am another UK graduate with a professional teaching qualification, and if you asked me whether it enhanced my teaching when I taught in further and higher education, I would say "possibly," but I can definitely say it did. The programme of continuous professional development that we have within the sector is important not just in the teaching of skills, as has already been said, but in teaching staff how do deal with students with learning difficulties or disabilities and how to cope with a broad range of social problems. At IADT we have a dedicated teacher training centre for our own staff, who are also doing master's and PhD degrees to continue gaining academic knowledge on the research side.

There is a slightly old-fashioned view of the academic. At IADT we have many staff who work with us part-time but also work in industry, as radio producers, in television, as photographers or in arts management, and they bring that day-to-day real world experience to us. The notion that an academic is a full academic may be true in some cases, but there are a lot of cases in which real-world day-to-day experience is brought in.

Mr. Ned Costello

I would also like to respond to Deputy Lyons's comment on teaching and learning. First, the HEA is currently working on a proposal for a national academy of teaching and learning. This is not an out-of-the-blue thing; it is designed to bring together many of the initiatives that were spawned under the strategic innovation fund in the area of teaching and learning, all of which is within the area of enhancing collaboration. The other thing is that demonstration of teaching competence and the development of teaching portfolios is a major part of assessment for promotion in universities, so it is something that is strongly recognised.

Mr. Pat McLoughlin

I assure Deputy Lyons that there are a number of lights under a variety of bushels in the IoT sector. Maybe we do not get them out there in the way we should, but we certainly can give a list of initiatives that are having an impact on the ground in terms of rounded development for students. As Dr. Doona said, much of this is in concert with industry partners.

Chairman

Before we move on to the second session - just to give hope to those who are waiting to join us - we will have three final sets of questions.

Deputy Michael Conaghan

I welcome the delegation. I ask Mr. Costello to expand on something in his written submission. He urges that we play to our strengths in arts and culture, and he is referring to that from an economic perspective. Perhaps he would say a little about that.

One of the big challenges is to broaden participation at third level across the social spectrum. There is major inequality at the heart of Irish society. I have not heard much about that today and I would like to hear some brief thoughts. Perhaps the witnesses would refer to some of their policies, initiatives or ideas in this area.

There has been much emphasis on aligning the education system with the skills required in the economy, which is of course important. However, we live in a fast-moving world, and the requirements of the economy change quickly. There is a danger that we will skew the education system too definitively in that direction, and I am uneasy about that. I would like to see how we strike this balance, particularly the balance between training and education. We must distinguish between those two activities, and the balance should perhaps be more sensitively struck because, as I said, the economy can change so quickly.

One of the speakers spoke strongly about further education, and I am delighted to have heard this. What is striking about the further education system is how successfully, and inexpensively, it has straddled the continuum of education, training and employment. For example, Ballyfermot College of Further Education, in my own area, has practically rewritten the credo for the film and animation industry, and has been very successful in that regard. One could pick out lots of other examples, in areas of economic activity such as arts and culture and child care, in which high quality but inexpensive delivery models have been successfully honed by VECs. They have 150 years of experience. The great colleges that the vocational education sector has nurtured and cultivated in this country include the DIT at Bolton Street and Kevin Street and colleges of art and design and music. Thus, there is a backdrop of expertise and experience in the education, training and employment continuum.

Deputy Anthony Lawlor

I welcome the witnesses. It is a pity Senator Barrett has gone as I wanted to reply to his comment by saying that one of the worst lecturers I ever had was in mathematics. I am sure he was well qualified but he did not know how to lecture properly.

My point is about the emphasis that is put on Irish in our education system. A third of the kids who did their leaving certificates last year did not do Irish, which means that two thirds did. Is there a connection between that and the fact that students must have Irish to enter the NUI universities? If the NUI universities decided not to have Irish as a compulsory subject for entry, would there be a drop in the numbers doing leaving certificate Irish? I did a science degree and I found it strange that I came across no Irish at all throughout my degree course.

To follow on from what Deputy Lyons said, when I spent a short while teaching, I was required to do the ceard teastas Gaeilge even though my subjects were maths, science and biology. In order to teach mathematics, biology and science at second level, I was required to have the ceard teastas Gaeilge. It was compulsory to have it in order to teach, regardless of one's subjects. Do the delegates agree there is an over-emphasis on the Irish language in the education system?

Deputy Brendan Ryan

Mr. Costello indicated that the paper we are discussing today is the outcome of a request from the Minister to examine the issues concerned. Reading through the paper and listening to the delegates' comments, it seems there is not necessarily an imperative for change coming from the third level authorities. My impression is that if they had not been asked to do so, they would not be inclined to devise these options for consideration. Are the delegates of the view that there is in fact an imperative for change? As Professor Scott remarked, there is no best option identified but rather we have a list of suggestions to consider. My concern is that there may be an element of change for change's sake and that there is a danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. For all its failures, the current system is seen to be transparent and although not perhaps as fair as it could be, it at least attempts to be as fair as possible. I am concerned those elements could be diluted.

Has analysis been done of the respective performances of third level students pre and post the points system?

Dr. Brendan Murphy

In terms of the difference between training and education, our fundamental concern is that all our courses offer participants knowledge, skill and competence. Those three words are referenced repeatedly by the National Framework of Qualifications and are written into all our course objectives. Any proposal for a new course must demonstrate the level of knowledge, skill and competence it will impart to students. Many of the institutes of technology grew out of vocational schools. My own institution, Cork Institute of Technology, has its origins in Crawford Technical College, Crawford College of Art and Design and the Municipal School of Music, the oldest music school on the British islands - if we are allowed to use that term in this august building - dating from the 1850s. We have built on a long tradition.

Reference was made to a particular organisation in regard to its cheap mode of delivery. The reality is that we are tied into a system of contracts. Some 80% of my budget goes on pay and those contracts are negotiated not by me but at a national level. That is the primary cost factor in any delivery.

On the Irish language, Deputy Lawlor will be pleased to hear that the requirement in institutes of technology is either English or Irish.

Deputy Anthony Lawlor

I am aware of that. I was not referring to the institutes of technology in that regard.

Dr. Brendan Murphy

I understand. Deputy Ryan asked whether we in the higher education system accept the need for change. Everybody accepts there have been unintended consequences of the points system in terms of the behaviour it has driven. Going back to Deputy Lyons's point, we have proposed putting a value on English and mathematics in the leaving certificate. If one does not put any value on particular subjects, students take a message from that. As a society, we should send out the message that these are important subjects in the leaving certificate. We, as higher education institutions, should place a value on them. We want students who can communicate and who are numerate. Even those who enter humanities programmes must be numerate as well as literate.

However, it is also, as Deputy Ryan observed, about maintaining fairness in the system and safeguarding the faith and trust people have in it. It is not about changing the system radically but rather according a particular value to the points obtained in mathematics and English. In regard to the proposal on the international baccalaureate, it was a question of seeking to return to what the leaving certificate originally set out to be, namely, from a curriculum point of view, to provide a broad general secondary education which every citizen should have. It is one of the more dramatic proposals.

The Deputy asks whether tinkering with a system that fundamentally works will have a negative impact. That is a concern. If we could predict with certainty what the impact of certain changes might be, we could play around with it more freely. One must make changes slowly and deliberately and consider the consequences. It is vital that we avoid simply driving a different set of behaviours.

In regard to supplementary testing, I have been long enough in the system to remember when all prospective third level students were interviewed. Could one guarantee that such a system would be fair, open and transparent? The simple answer is no. None of us wants to return to that. We should also bear in mind that mass higher education is a relatively recent phenomenon, leading to the current situation where two out of three leaving certificate students go on to higher education. One of our recommendations, as referred to by the Deputy, is that a route through further education might ease some of the problems encountered by those with low point scores. A low point score is not necessarily indicative of academic problems but may point to other problems. Some young people need time to find their way and may benefit from a certain amount of remedial work. We sometimes forget that people mature at different rates and that 18 year olds are not all the same.

Dr. Annie Doona

I am delighted to have an opportunity to comment on access. It is an issue that is dear to my heart and which was a significant element of my PhD. At the Institute of Art, Design and Technology some 15% of our students are mature students, which is quite high for the sector, and some 7% are students with disabilities, which is also high. However, we have a very low percentage of students from the disadvantaged schools in our area. We have been doing some work to discover why that is. Within the institutes of technology and the universities there are several schemes which seek to redress that balance, including the higher education access route, HEAR, and the disability access route to education, DARE, schemes which encourage participation by students with disabilities. There are also programmes and articulation arrangements with further education colleges to facilitate the route to which Dr. Murphy referred.

One of the most successful initiatives I have seen was a project on which I did some work with the University of Southern California. It was a long-term project which began by engaging with primary school children and their parents in order to instil the notion of higher education as a possibility for them. We have done some work in Dún Laoghaire, with the help of dormant account funding, with young Travellers and their parents to discover whether the notion of high education is even on their radar. We came up with some very interesting results from that. The bottom line with access is that we must go right back to primary level, working in community organisations and with parent groups. We also must look at the fears and concern that hinder access, of which money is certainly one, with the expense of supporting a student through higher education being prohibitive for some. The issue of student registration charges or fees - whatever one calls them - must be addressed. It is only by engaging at the start, with very young children, that we can begin to make the change that are needed. The schemes currently in place are only partially working.

Mr. Ned Costello

I will respond to two questions from Deputy Conaghan and one from Deputy Ryan. Deputy Conaghan asked about the economic element to which we referred in our submission on the creative side. I suppose that goes back to work by Michael Porter in the early 1990s that underpins the Culliton report, which emphasises the agglomeration effects and clustering. More recently, Richard Florida has developed this theory of creative cities and has emphasised that most successful regions have industrial strengths as well as a strong creative class, which is more in the arts and humanities field. The fusing together of these two fields has a very powerful effect. It results in areas where people want to live and thrive. It also, as Professor Hogan mentioned, creates spin-offs in the area of the creative and cultural industries. Those sectors then become industries in their own right, alongside the technology sector. That in essence is what we were referring to.

Deputy Michael Conahan also asked about the danger of the instrumentalisation of learning by being too narrowly vocationally focused. That is what I was emphasising when I spoke about diversity in the system. The registrars of the universities had an interchange with industry about a year ago on what industry wants from our sector. What became clear is that there are two different views. One segment of industry wants very tightly vocationally qualified people while another wants the broader, rounded and not necessarily so discipline-specific type of graduate. Our higher education system has to cater for all of that. As was emphasised by colleagues here today, we agree there is a set of core competencies and, as Professor Scott has said, we and the industry representative bodies are completely ad idem on a set of core competencies that need to be inculcated throughout the higher education experience, but done in a diverse way as no one size fits all.

Deputy Ryan asked about the points system. Dr. Murphy has put it very well, somewhere in the nexus of the leaving certificate and the transition to third level, but with the rationing of third level places there is a problem. It needs more debate and discussion as to where the problem lies and precisely what are the right solutions. We point out in our report, if one takes the various attributes that one would like an admission system to achieve, there is no one perfect system. The current points system majors on certain aspects but is weak on other aspects. Probably any other solution will have a different balance of pros and cons. The Deputy is correct that we are of the view that one treads carefully in this space because a number of Deputies have made the point that the current system is flawed but works.

We want to ensure that if we replace it, that we will replace it with something better. That requires not just an educational but a societal debate. It was interesting that when Professor Hyland's report was published, one of the options - the lottery type system - started to provoke a negative reaction in the pages of the media. It goes to show that one can put forward options but we need to have them fully debated. It is an educational as well as a societal issue.

Professor Linda Hogan

I wish to address two of the issues that were raised during the last set of questions. On the issue of access, I fully agree with my colleague from Dún Laoghaire when she states that it must begin with engagement with primary and secondary schools in the locality, really changing culture as well as providing access routes. The Trinity College access programme has been very successful in that, albeit in a very limited way. The major challenges for access programmes is to ensure that when students participate on them they are fully integrated into the student body, that the services provided are done in a very integrated way and that the retention of students is high.

The Trinity College access programme has a very high retention rate, so that is not an issue. The question is how we can resource it in terms of rolling it out. It is an excellent programme but it is far too small. We know that if we broaden it without the resources we will probably have larger intakes but the retention of students through the system will not be as it ought to be. It is about balancing that.

On the question of the Irish language, I do not have a view on whether there is an over-emphasis on Irish but one of the great challenges for Ireland is that learning a language at such an early age and running through the system has not seemed to equip our students to learn and be fluent in other languages. One thing we have not mentioned is that the real skills shortage is the combination of technical and technological knowledge plus language skills. We have missed that in our discussion today. It is a mystery how we could have such intensive language teaching and such low levels of fluency. When one learns one language it is commonly known that there is a much greater aptitude to learn another. That does not seem to have translated in our educational system. We must look very seriously at the teaching of all languages in our system. That is where the next generation of challenges will come from for Irish graduates in terms of industry.

Mr. Pat McLoughlin

May I address Deputy Conahan's fear that we may appear to be slaves to industry. I can assure Deputies that we are not, but that is not to lose sight of the fact that we are in the business of changing people's lives for the better via education. There is no better way to change people's lives positively for the better than to give them an active stake in society. What better way to give them that but through active participation in a vibrant workforce. We try to underpin this requirement for fundamental knowledge and these core competencies in and around the broader skills and knowledge sets of transferable skills. We also try to get students to the stage where they can cope with the dynamic of change in the workplace and respond to that dynamic. That is something that takes time through the educational process and one does not see the impact of that until the third or forth year of a programme.

Let us look at my institution, the Institute of Technology, Tallaght. About two years ago we looked at the variety of routes into the institution. We have 14 different ways through which one can enter the institution, the vast majority targeted at access provision and second chance education. We have taken, and we are happy to take a lot of students from Ballyfermot who performed exceedingly well on a great many of our programmes. We can see that continuum from a structured and formal further education sector as being a real positive development, if it were to come about nationally. There is a responsibility on industry and ourselves to start promoting real careers in industry sectors all the way from primary school, where we get to children and encourage them to start to develop a passion in terms of what they want to do. We want to get them to look beyond the fireman and the premiership football examples.

We must start to sell the value of real careers to schoolchildren right the way back through the educational continuum. We need to co-promote that idea. When people see us arriving at a school, they think we are promoting courses but we are at pains to try to tell them that we are promoting life changing opportunities for them for active citizenship and active engagement in the workforce. If we stood side by side with our partners from industry who can give real examples of this, we would do the State a huge service. The point has been made that, in terms of how we support the remediation of the access students, this matters in terms of approach. That is extremely difficult to deliver through our current resourcing model. We still strive and are available to do it but it is becoming increasingly difficult.

Professor Anne Scott

I will pick up directly on that point. DCU has the oldest access programme in the country and probably the largest, but it is in the middle of one of the areas with the lowest participation rate in higher education in the country. Just over 20% of our intake comprises a combination of disabled, lower socioeconomic and mature students. The issue of straight from school access is one of expectation as well as economics. As Professor Hogan has pointed out we work directly, through the HEAR scheme, and intensively with 120 feeder schools, some of which have traditionally low participation rates in higher education.

It requires a full-time member of staff who does nothing else. If resources are tight it means the person focused on that area cannot do other things. In the current environment it is becoming an increasingly difficult issue, as is the expense of higher education. It is not simply a fees issue, there are basic issues such as where people are going to live, whether they have heat and electricity to study and where they are going to buy books.

One way we have tried to deal with such issues is to work with our foundation to raise funding for access students and examine their economic backgrounds and level of support. Some students need full residential support while others may require a book grant. It requires a huge amount of fundraising effort to integrate students, as Professor Hogan said, and give them a fighting chance of succeeding in terms of equalling the playing field. The playing field is not only academic; students may need extra tutorial or academic skills support. There are many other factors not directly linked to academics for which students need support.

Over the past four years we have worked with Ballymun regeneration but we will struggle to continue this work. We have a physical presence in Ballymun on Shanowen Road to try to demystify the institution and make access easier by having students participate in minor taster modules or level 6 or 7 modules which feed into other programmes. It is a huge resource constraint. Currently 50% is paid by us and 50% by Ballymun but as our budget gets squeezed we may have to reconsider it. The broadening access agenda is very dear to DCU's mission and the entire sector has worked hard to implement the HEAR and DARE schemes. A public discussion needs to happen because while there is no doubt there are inequalities in the system, it takes money to bring people on to an even playing field.

I am of the same mind as Professor Hogan on the Irish language. I have no strong feelings one way or the other regarding the level of teaching but we have a significant issue. We should have much better history and modern languages teaching than we do. Irish mirrors performance in German, French, Spanish and Italian in our schools. Students leave school with a literature background in languages. They do not have the level of linguistic competency required. There is already a major issue. It has not hit the media yet because as soon as people began to feed it into the media they said there was no problem with STEM, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. However, there is a problem with STEM and modern languages.

It is not an Irish problem but Ireland should be in a much better position to address it than our UK neighbours who do not generally take a second language. Most of our students take a second language and we are still struggling to have them work through third and fourth languages. It is a major economic as well as intellectual issue for us.

Deputy Anthony Lawlor

None of the delegates have answered my question. Has Mr. Costello ever made a submission to the Department of Education and Skills requesting the removal of Irish as a compulsory subject for entry to national universities?

Chairman

I ask anyone else who wishes to comment to submit a question in writing.

Mr. Ned Costello

The factual answer is "No" but I will convey the Deputy's views to the council and presidents of the universities. We will reflect on what he said.

Chairman

I thank the delegates for the presentation and lengthy discussion. It will feed into our discussion over the next couple of months. A second delegation is appearing before the committee today and we will inform the delegates about that discussion.

Sitting suspended at 4.05 p.m. and resumed at 4.08 p.m.