Ms Carol Hanney:

On behalf of the City of Dublin Education and Training Board, CDETB, I thank the Chair and the joint committee members for the opportunity to contribute.

CDETB has a very broad range of services including second level schools, youth services and Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, as well as delivering a large and extensive FET provision. We run full-time courses in our FET colleges and centres and a varied range of part-time courses through those centres and also through our adult and community education services.

When the virus hit in late February and early March, we had to move very rapidly from on-site to online delivery. We were faced with the challenge of communicating, educating and training in a very different way. We moved to remote delivery through email, text and phone, and to Zoom, Teams, Webex or other platforms for group communication.

The big staff challenges were availability of devices and the need to rapidly upskill in online teaching. Initially, teachers, tutors and instructors generally used their own devices, which in many instances were shared with other family members. Students were operating on various devices and many were merely working on their mobile phones. Over the first few months, the ETB was only able to loan a small number of devices to very needy students.

We had to ensure that we continued to deliver education and training programmes, assessments were held, standards and quality maintained and as many students as possible could obtain their qualifications. We worked with Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI, and made an early decision to move from examinations to assignments where possible.

Our student body is very diverse at FET level. We have full-time students at levels 5 and 6 and we also have more hard-to-reach students involved in literacy and other programmes. The learner ability to work online therefore differed greatly. We were fortunate that teachers were already involved in technically enhanced learning and many were also already using different platforms, such as Moodle, in their teaching. We are very happy that by late May almost all our students had gained their awards. However, there was a difficulty in skills-based training in the apprenticeship area as remote instruction and assessment were problematic.

As we approached summer and planned for September, we concentrated on staff professional development in online teaching. We were also involved in recruiting online and in preparing schools, colleges and centres for reopening. Fortunately, we received grants towards minor building works, the purchase of personal protective equipment and the purchase of devices for learners. One of the new challenges for September and October was establishing a relationship with students as we expected to be back online within a few weeks. We were fortunate in that we were able to have person-to-person contact at the beginning of the academic year, which was positive in terms of inducting students. Because of 2 m distancing, they did not attend every day in the normal way but they had a chance to meet each other and their teachers and tutors. Now, at level 5, we are still seeing some students, especially those involved in practical courses or in small group activity, which is necessary to mitigate disadvantage.

We have advanced dramatically in the past eight or nine months and our use of IT in the virtual classroom or in the face-to-face classroom has been transformed. We now have to interrogate what has happened. We have to pick up the pieces but we also have to build on the massive advances we have made as educators. We documented what happened from March to June in a report entitled, Informing the Future, which we are now analysing.

We are upskilling people in FET and the skills needed are constantly changing. We are undergoing another transformation of our society. The world of work is changing dramatically and we, as educators, have to be able to adapt and respond quickly and effectively.