Ms Cróna Gallagher:

On what we learned, Ms Hanney talked about the amount of work that was done in respect of upskilling the digital capacity of staff. All of the education and training boards engaged in a piece of research undertaken by Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI, to see how we modified our teaching, learning and assessment during the crisis. The findings of that research were very interesting. We found that there is absolutely no replacement for face-to-face learning and people definitely want that. We also found that even people working at the lowest levels on the national framework of qualifications, NFQ, are interested in doing part of their courses online. That came as a bit of a surprise to us. We have learned that there is a place for online learning in every course.

Without sounding complacent, ETBs have recognised, primarily through our engagement with industry, that the world of work is changing and the future of work is going to be very different. People will have five or six jobs in their lifetime, and nobody will go into a job and stay there for the rest of their life. Industry has been telling us that we need to facilitate people to develop a range of skills, including good communication skills - both written and oral - and digital skills, and also transferable or transversal skills like decision-making and problem-solving. We have been trying to build the development and acquisition of those skills into our courses. The FET colleges are very well placed to do that because we operate in very small learner groups. That way, the teacher, tutor, or instructor can facilitate the development of those skills within the learner groups. We have recognised that we are on the right track there.