Dr. Seán Rowland:

I will cover the questions by responding in a story-like fashion about all the issues and bringing them together. I will address them directly and if I omit anything, just pull me up on it, Chairman.

I thank the members for their questions. It is great to have the opportunity to discuss this. I will ask Dr. Nicholas Breakwell and Ms Anna Davitt to intervene as appropriate. We interview all of the candidates who will be accepted. We interview them in Irish and in English. They all hold level 8 or university college degrees already and they all must have a standard of Irish that we consider to be sufficient to sustain and develop them through a postgraduate level course. Most of the people who come to the college would have had a career already. They tend to be in their late 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. A large number of them are regionally based throughout the country. They do not have to move to a city, rent an apartment and leave home. Many issues do not arise for them because they can study from home.

The cost is the same. All of our students pay their tuition, just as all the graduate students at other colleges pay their tuition to go to a teacher training programme. However, the one difference is that obviously the other colleges get State intervention for the students. We do not get that. However, the student pays the same amount, €9,000, for a two year course.

It is the same at the other colleges as it is with us.

With regard to numbers, more than 80% of the most recent class to graduate last autumn were working when surveyed at graduation. This is a worthwhile debate. Do we tell people to put their cheques away because they cannot be teachers when the world needs approximately 6 million teachers? We have a strong history of teaching people all over the world. Our missionaries and lay people travelled. A large cohort of people come to us for interview who say they are emigrating and they do not want to go without a teaching qualification. We also have people who go abroad for a few years or some for the rest of their lives. We do not promote that or engage in that because it is up to the people themselves. With regard to numbers, we look at the Central Statistics Office figures and talk to officials in the Department of Education and Skills, teacher unions and the schools. We come back to the programme for schools, which has been enriched hugely since 2003. No college can guarantee a job to a graduate in any discipline and we are in austere times. Do we stop preparing teachers? If a cap is applied, where is set? Is the cap set for Ireland? For example, our programme in England is growing rapidly every year and providing more and more qualified teachers. Why would we cap the number if people want to become teachers and we know, particularly at secondary level, it may take them eight to ten years to get a permanent pensionable job in Ireland? Whose decision is it? Is it the individual's decision in the context of his or her career advancement or do we have a broader spectrum to look at where we have a responsibility to Third World countries or to individuals in Ireland who want to upskill, are willing to pay their own money to do so and who are not asking for Government intervention? Do we say "No, ye can't do that"? I do not have all the answers to these questions. We have had larger classes but we have pulled them back a little because the worst thing that can happen is to flood the place with teachers. However, we are finding more and more that people want to do something, especially if they are unemployed, have a college degree and can qualify. They want to qualify while they have time. The largest cohort within our teaching programmes is mothers of young children who decide that they do not want to go back to the technology, pharmaceutical or insurance company or the bank and they want to go back to school with their children and teach. They make a lifestyle choice. People make the decision to earn a little less but to have more time with children, more leisure time and more quality time. They apply in their hundreds.

The next question was about how we started in England. We were at a conference on education and we met some departmental officials and they said they would like to come over to see what we were doing. They came over and they then invited us to present for the provision of teacher education with a blended approach. The blend tends to be 50:50. They spend time together in the Gaeltacht. We pay rent for the education centres around the country, which are invaluable, and we bring the students together in them for lectures and to meet their supervisors. They also have their online programmes, which, as Dr. Breakwell pointed out, are asynchronous live. They also have seminars, which are like chat rooms. It is interesting to see how they have formed such close relations by graduation because they can talk to each other every day online and they can make an appointment to talk to their tutor. There is human contact all the time because it is live online. All the faces are on screen and if a student has to leave the class to go to the bathroom, for example, he or she presses a button and a hand goes up. The tutor will ask what is up and the student will say he or she is stepping out.

It is fascinating to see how it becomes a live learning community. The feedback is enormously positive. These are adults who have all been to university. They have gone through the campus experience and there are fortunate that this is all done. They may not need that same experience again now that they are in their 30s or whatever and this course may be more tailored for their needs. We listen to them all the time and we also meet the school principals and teachers regularly to get feedback. In Ireland, England and the US, schools are becoming much more integral to the preparation of future generations of teachers because the bottom line is the teachers, principals and so on are the ones who know what works at the coal face. That is why on interview panels we always have principals and teachers with ten years' experience or more. They are able to tell us if somebody will fit into their environment. We have the paperwork. We know they have the qualifications to get in but we want to see whether they have empathy, the psychological balance. The more we work with schools, the more we will get the proper teacher for the future generations together.