Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Monday, 26 April 2021

Seanad Committee on the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union

Responses to Brexit in Further and Higher Education: Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science

Photo of Simon HarrisSimon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely. There are three parts to the work the Higher Education Authority, HEA, is doing with my Department. One is identifying what more the colleges could do with current resources. The second is what more they could do with additional resources while obviously trying as much as possible to benefit from the CAO data in terms of where the demand is.

The third part is trickiest but the Senator is entirely right to highlight it as it is the most important. If my Department funds additional places through Government, is it possible for people to find the matching placement that is required? We are talking hypothetically but let us say that the higher education institutions could create 100 more nursing or medicine places this year. In that case, we would need the Department of Health to find the matching placements. Similarly, in teaching terms, it would be the Department of Education. A body of work is, therefore, going on to try to match that and see if we can allocate extra funding to get a college place where the Department of Health can provide extra capacity to find a placement. Good work is going on in that space. We are looking at those three parts of the work.

I consider a metric, though, which I believe is fair and I am happy for us to be measured against. Pre-pandemic, every year, on average, approximately 50% of students who applied to the CAO got their first choice. Approximately 80% got one of their top three choices. The commitment the Government is making to leaving certificate students this year is that we want to see that ratio maintained. Covid or no Covid, there is no year in which every student gets his or her first place. The year before last, for example, 15,000 students applied to do various health subjects, for which there were 5,000 places. Every year, therefore, more students will be applying for places than there are places available. When it comes to the question of fairness, can we keep the metrics the same in order that the same ratio of students get their first choice and the same ratio get their top three?

Not to go off on a rant, but I believe the bigger body of work, which we kicked off with the Government last week, and on which we need to do much more, is the integrated tertiary education system. The provost of Trinity College Dublin has talked a lot about this idea that we have created a points race and quite an elitist attitude to education.

The Senator spoke about the dropout rate. A person is statistically much more likely to finish his or her degree in university if, perhaps, he or she does a year in further education first. As for the apprenticeship route, the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, and I are working on these things. At the moment, we are trying to introduce measures to grow the sector, which are good and welcome. To see the full benefit, though, we have to create the integrated tertiary education system and effectively replace the CAO form. We must show students all the options and have greater links between further and higher education. If there is to be a purpose to my new Department, and I certainly believe there is, that is a key body of work we must get done. We are determined to do so, starting next year, and building on it over the three years.

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