Dr. Jim Murray:

I would like to touch on one of the issues Senators Ruane and Kelleher both raised in different ways. One way of referring to it is the "Cinderella" status of apprenticeships. This is not an easy issue to address. The status of an education and training programme and how it is perceived socially is deeply embedded within the psyche. It is a real cultural challenge that we have to take on and we should approach it in two ways. First, we have to neutralise the term "apprenticeship". Mr. O'Flaherty touched on this to a degree. Apprenticeship has to be perceived more as a mode of provision, rather than as something that has a whole set of social values attached to it, notwithstanding whether they are right or wrong. Second, we need to mainstream apprenticeships as a mode of provision. That means they need to be much more visible within what I will describe, for want of a better term, as the regular system. That is particularly the case in higher education. The new apprenticeships have begun that task by putting apprenticeship right in at the heart of higher education. This is a small beginning but degree programmes are now available which are in the apprenticeship mode of provision. We have to keep working on that and make apprenticeships much more visible. Over time, an attitudinal change will hopefully occur. It is, however, a substantial challenge. As Senator Gallagher mentioned, the numbers are stark. There are reasons for that but with the new apprenticeships, we have opened up the discussion in a way that has never been done previously. We have to sustain this discussion in the long term to make that change.