Dr. Anne Looney:

Senator Maria Byrne asked about the STEM subjects. There are a number of initiatives in the early years system and the school system to encourage children and young people, especially girls, to consider courses in STEM subjects. When we consider the data from the Higher Education Authority relevant to teaching, we graduate three arts, humanities or social sciences graduates for every one STEM graduate. This is just how it is. There is an imbalance in the system anyway, so the number of science graduates that are available to go into teacher education is relatively low compared with the number of graduates in history or English who are available to go into teacher education. There are, however, a number of initiatives in that context and we do recruit a number of people who have gone into science and technology careers who, at a certain point, would like to consider teaching. We give them the option to come back. This is important.

There is a perverse positivity around the fact that we are losing some teachers internationally. They are in very high demand.

My colleague from the TUI mentioned that. It is evident when one travels internationally. The quality of people whom we get into initial teacher education is exceptional, as is the quality of our graduates. It is why countries are queuing up to recruit them. We are doing a good job on that front and the taxpayer and people who are paying fees are getting bang for their buck. Unfortunately, we may be contributing to the improvement of the education system in Dubai more than we are to an improvement in Dublin. That is important to remember.

Something that we have not mentioned so far is that there are populations of people who are reluctant to move into teaching. In particular, students from backgrounds where there might not be a tradition of attending college will often believe that teaching is not for them. A number of initiatives in the system are giving students who would never have thought of teaching an opportunity to move into that field. We in DCU are proud that 14% of our undergraduate primary students come through our Access programme and that, through the programme for access to higher education, PATH, fund next year, we will be accepting students into teacher education from schools that have never sent such a student to us before. That is an untapped source of teachers. They are excited about entering teacher education and will be significant role models for their schools and the teaching profession in the future.