Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 13 May 2014

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection

Implementation of Junior Cycle Student Award: Minister for Education and Skills

5:00 pm

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

The announcement I made was that we were going to reform after 25 years of stalling. That was a political announcement and I took responsibility for it. I said it at the ASTI conference last and, in so far as I was heard, at the conference this year I am open to discuss in detail the speed at which we travel, the best way to get there and the rest of it as long as no one has a veto on the destination.

With regard to the figure of 10%, I commend the committee on examining the comprehensive five-year further education strategy programme launched by SOLAS. For the first time in history of the State, we have an integrated and joined up further education system. It is arguable that, in many cases, the 10% who drop out of the school system do not necessarily get the junior certificate examination result in the first instance. There would possibly more appropriately move at 14 or 15 years of age into a vocational type combination of apprenticeship, on-the-job training and learning and off-the-job education, as is done in middle Europe and Austria. The German Minister for Education at federal level has said that Germany will not move to the European target of 60% having graduated from universities because it has an alternative parallel system that works much better. Youth unemployment and industrial output results in those countries are much better. What we launched yesterday in the Chester Beatty Library is a properly linked up system.

It will address the kinds of concerns many people - professional teachers in the area - have that the overtly academic approach to education, which is characteristic of the junior certificate in its present form, simply does not suit the interests and the attributes of those young people.

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