Dr. Teresa O'Doherty:

Student ambition and the ambitions of families were mentioned. It is very important that we create supports so that families have ambitions. Not everybody wants to become a teacher. We are working on initial teacher education access, but students may have had poor experiences of teachers in school. We need to invest in creating career trajectories for young people, beginning at second or even primary level, and support them along the way to enable them to choose who they would like to be. They would then know that they need to do the leaving certificate and get points in order to do that.

If a child has been put on a restricted timetable, the level of ambition and encouragement to attend school is not very strong when he or she feels unwelcome. One of the issues is that children who want to become teachers at primary level must have higher level leaving certificate Irish. As part of our support for students, we have provided grinds and Irish language classes on campus and in homes. We are offering trips to the Gaeltacht, which other children go on, to support them. We do not want to dilute the entry requirement; rather, we are enabling students to reach that target.

Our project officer has spent a lot of time working with families because the whole family sends a student to school. Students cannot achieve their goals without the support of their parents and siblings. While parents are very supportive of and ambitious for their children in many ways, they know they cannot afford certain things and many children feel they do not want to put an undue burden on their families in order to go to college, which is very expensive. Working with families, raising expectations and knowing that the system can be trusted are all important.

In our written submission we raised the fact that many students feel they cannot trust the system, even the higher education system, because when the very small number of Travellers who attend third level are awarded degrees they cannot get employment. We are supporting people through the different transitions from primary to post-primary and post-primary to third level, but a lot of support is needed in terms of retention in third level and transition to the workforce.

Structured support was mentioned. The time has come to make sure there is specific structured support for these students, over and above what might be given to other candidates. Poverty and disadvantage are intergenerational.

I think that needs a lot of support. Now is the time, and I think Mr. McDonagh said it extremely well, to grasp that when we have work like the PATH project happening in different higher educational organisations, supporting Travellers through teacher education or through education generally.