Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The college works with postgraduates in the main, which is good because, as the witnesses have said, they have had the university experience. Do the witnesses believe there would be benefits in working with undergraduates? Does the college have an interest in the area of second level education at all? As Senator D'Arcy mentioned, there are particular areas where our performance is very poor in this country, one of which is language learning. Our performance in digital learning at second level is also relatively poor because we do not have enough students with the confidence to apply through the CAO system for computer science and information and communication technology courses. This is happening despite the fact it is estimated that there will be approximately 900,000 jobs across the EU in those areas by 2015.

Has the college tracked the progress of its graduates, in terms of longitudinal work and whether they are staying in teaching? To elaborate a little on what the Chairman said about empathy, will we get empathy from a teacher who does not have much face-to-face interaction with students? I think 50:50 is pretty good but empathy is a key ingredient in relationship building, and relationships are the key factor for children and teachers. If there is not a good relationship between teacher and student, there will be no learning.

In these austere times, would there be a temptation on the part of the State to move the majority of students to the private education sector so that the State would not have to pay for their education in the teacher education colleges? It might save State funding to the public colleges like Mary Immaculate College, Saint Patrick's College and the Marino Institute of Education. Do the witnesses have any thoughts on that?