Dr. Pauric Travers:

They were three very different experiences. I was a member of the governing body of DCU as president of St. Patrick's College and it provided a particular insight into higher education. It is somewhat less relevant perhaps to the current role. The centre has been part of St. Patrick's College or St. Patrick's College DCU but it will now be an independent body. Membership of the Teaching Council was a hugely valuable learning experience from my perspective. It is still relatively new and it is playing a significant role. I mentioned the reform of teacher education. One of the major pieces of work the Teaching Council facilitated and directed was reform of teacher education programmes and ensuring they were fit for purpose. This required significant changes on the part of the colleges.

The Teaching Council is representative of the different stakeholders, particularly of teachers but also of all the stakeholders, including parents and management bodies. Working with stakeholders was useful. The expectation is that the Educational Research Centre will work easily with different stakeholders and different groups.

The CAO role was a specific one. The CAO manages intake into higher education. I found that useful because of the issue of the points race and the pressure there is on students at leaving certificate level arising from the ever increasing number of points that seem to be required to get into this or that programme. One of the areas on which the Educational Research Centre has done research is State examinations, the relative challenge posed by different subjects within the leaving certificate and whether it is easier to get an "A" in one subject than in another, and then looking at trends over time in regard to State examinations. One of the areas that the Education Research Centre is doing some research on - I am not sure at what stage it is and I look forward to hearing more about it - is the difference that schools make, in other words, taking the intake they have and then the outcomes they produce. Sometimes a lot of attention in the national media goes on what are seen as high achieving schools because they get X number of students into higher education or into some high-points course, whereas other schools may get much less attention but their achievement may be far greater because of the challenge they are faced with and the issues they have to deal with. The ERC is doing some work in that area which I am interested in hearing more about.