Mr. Jim Miley:

I agree wholeheartedly with Professor Hegarty's comments on the need to radically expand apprenticeships.

My colleague referred to critical thinking as a skills deficit. It is one of the key deficits of those who come into the third level system. The lack of critical thinking, group learning and group work are very much a feature of the experience as they come through from the leaving certificate.

On the question of whether the leaving certificate and entry to third level education should be separated, we have dealt with this in the more detailed submission to the committee. On balance, we believe that a State-accredited leaving certificate, or whatever it might be called as a result of a reformed process, should remain as the primary mechanism for entry into the third level system. It may not be perfect, but in an already strained system we could get into significant duplication of resources and costs. There is that bias issue. We had the matriculation exam in the past and there are still elements of it in one or two colleges for one or two courses. That was used at a time when the proportion of people who went through level education was very small.

It would be an enormous challenge to set up that system for 80,000 applicants a year. It would be ideal to maintain the leaving certificate and perhaps have some additional elements loaded on as part of the entry process while keeping the leaving certificate as the anchor.