Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It really is the prerogative of each member state to set out its own priorities for the Presidency. That is done in consultation with the Commission and the three countries that form a cluster. In the case of the Irish Presidency, I shared our perspective on the future with both the Lithuanians and the Greeks. The Greeks were the third group of three countries. Ultimately, it is for each country to decide what it wants to prioritise. What we have succeeded in doing is maintaining a continuity in the format of communication.

The discussion to which I referred was as boring as hell. We could have all stayed at home and e-mailed and faxed information. People read out their scripts and walked away. There were bilateral meetings. We might as well have been at Ballinasloe horse fair as at the meeting as there was no engagement. What took place was not engagement. We brought two outside speakers, David Puttnam and Andreas Schleicher on one occasion and Christine Blower who was the representative of all the teachers’ unions in Europe.

I will come back to the issue of principal leadership. On the long-term strategy for education, the junior cycle is being radically transformed and it will not be complete until 2020. The first cohort to start second year will start next September. They will do English under a new regime in 2017. The next cohort starting first year in 2015 will take on five subjects including English, and so on until we have all of the full menu across the line. In the meantime the change will inevitably have an impact on the senior cycle, including the future of transition year because it is seen as an antidote to the rigid scholastic rote learning that currently characterises the junior certificate examination.

We are currently discussing a change in the points system with the universities. There is a good paper from September 2011, which is available on the Internet from a retired professor, Áine Hyland, about the transition process and the multiplicity of courses at levels 7 and 8 in institutions. They have increased from just over 400 to 970. Those members who are educationalists will have a better knowledge of the matter than many. Less than 20% of students have any idea of what they would like to study. They are faced with a baffling menu. One could do computers with art, or art with computers and ICT or computers with a bit of art and a bit of ICT. Universities and colleges are like premier league clubs. They just want the best players, in this case, students. The courses are hooks with a bit of bait on them to try to get students to do them. We are trying to move to a simplified system where there will be less choice and better quality. At the end of first year in college a student can then decide, as they can currently with engineering. There is a foundation course in all of the engineering schools in year one and then at the age of 19, as distinct from the age of 17, which is currently the case or sometimes even younger, one can choose to become a mechanical engineer or structural engineer. That leads to a better fit.

On the landscape of third level education, the institutes of technology go back to the regional technical colleges of the 1970s. They were the last project to be financed by the World Bank in this country before we joined the European Union. That landscape is going to be unrecognisable in two years’ time, as will the universities. There will be seven regional clusters of education across the country centred on the seven universities where there will be co-ordination in the delivery and supply of courses, the elimination of duplication and a fit between them. Given that we have a national qualifications framework one will be able to go from a level 8 course – an honours undergraduate course – to another, but other access programmes will bring people into the system and one will be able to move around the third level system. That will take us up to 2050 in terms of an educational landscape. There is long-term strategic thinking. By the end of this calendar year we will have a response from the higher education sector on the alignments and mergers of some of the current institutes of technology. One would not set out today to build 14 regional colleges of technology across the country. Our investment in the road network, communications, telecommunications and other changes have transformed the physical geography of this country in terms of time, travel and distance.

In response to Deputy Daly’s question about leadership and national school principals, there is a debate and a variance in practice across Europe. For example, in Lithuania, there is a national competition for principals and one applies to become a principal by virtue of one’s qualifications and then one is assigned a school. We are at a tentative stage of taking some of those principles – no pun intended – and applying them. One could ask whether there should be a maximum limit for holding the position of principal. Ten years has been suggested. Frank Feely, who was manager of Dublin City Council was manager for 19 years. Nobody can be on top of their game for 19 years, no matter how good they are. Even bishops have term limits and cannot hold the position after the age of 72. The question is whether there should be a time limit, if someone should be a principal in the school in which they were deputy principal or if they should move around. They are purely questions. Lest anyone in the Gallery or anywhere else think I am enunciating policy, I am not; I am simply giving a description.

Everyone comes from the perspective of their own background and place. They say this is the way it has been done here and this is the way it has always been done and we have not challenged it. The great virtue of the European experience is that with 27 other Ministers for education one hears how things are done differently or they have a different way of doing the same thing. That exposes one to considering different options and how they would work. One could ask what is the role of a principal in a school that has 750 children with special needs classes and perhaps a naíonra as well, as distinct from one third of our schools that have less than 100 pupils. Could one equate the role of a principal in a school of one size with another of a different size? These are all questions that we are now asking ourselves. We will look at best practice. Of course we will have consultations with all of the players who are directly involved. Both the Irish Primary Principals’ Network, IPPN, and its post-primary counterpart are talking more and more in such terms and looking at the programmes to which I referred, including Misneach, as Deputy Daly outlined, and how one takes them a stage further.