Mr. Paul Crone:

I am delighted to hear that the Deputy was outraged by those comments. I was the director of schools with the ETB in my previous role and I have heard that too. I take grave offence at it because I am of the opinion that the students with the greatest need need the best teachers and should always have them. That is true equality. To refer back to something Mr. Irwin said earlier, it may be a particularly urban issue. Disadvantaged schools in large urban areas are in close proximity to one another and some schools are DEIS schools while some are not. In that case, there are sometimes difficulties in attracting students and teachers. It is an issue we are going to have to continue to address. It is very clear that the DEIS programme is succeeding. It needs to progress at a rate of knots and probably a little bit quicker than it is.

The idea of apprenticeship is being reimagined. Traditionally, apprentices would have been seen walking around wearing a pair of Snickers trousers and boots with steel toecaps whereas there are now very attractive high-tech apprenticeships in further education and training, FET, colleges. These are attractive to both sexes. A lot of money, support and publicity has gone into that. The attitude towards apprenticeships is changing and will have to continue to change. That will involve us all. It will involve guidance counsellors, companies, SOLAS, which is doing a lot of work in the area, the ETBs and all of the schools.

To go back to Deputy Ó Cathasaigh, the changes to the primary school curriculum put the student at the centre. The junior cycle reform followed on from that and also put the student at the centre. Students get a great shock when going into the leaving certificate cycle, where the assessment is at the centre rather than the student. We really need to keep the skills, the collaboration, the working together, the autonomy, the student responsibility and the student flexibility. Students must be in charge of, and have responsibility for, their own learning journey. We need to keep those elements of the junior cycle as students move on to the leaving certificate cycle.