Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

It is a really interesting point. Obviously, my job is to worry about further education and training and apprenticeships, but the idea of integrating modules in languages or engineering as part of the leaving certificate or senior cycle plays to the same point. There is no reason a technological university or one of our traditional universities could not offer that type of access to a module as part of senior cycle. How it works and how it works in other places is quite simple. It is a credit-based system. Very often, someone will go to the local further education college for a couple of hours. The college will deliver that module once or twice a week to senior cycle students and students will get credit that will be recognised as their overall leaving certificate award and, potentially, their overall CAO score. It is really that simple. It is the delivery we must get right. We would have to reconcile how we would get a further education instructor to deliver education within a school setting but perhaps the answer to that is to take interested students to the local further education college, give them a taste for the environment, deliver the module there and bus them back to the school afterwards. I know this is the model that is followed in Scotland. There is a real idea there around this not being just a further education thing but could be a higher education thing in terms of an offering in the senior cycle.