Dr. Seán Rowland:

The bottom line for any teacher education provider is how a child will be educated and treated as a human being. We need to look at a potential teacher as somebody who can absolutely enrich, educate and support a child or children. We must build tools around our programme to ensure we make that person the best teacher possible now. We cannot predict what those people will be in future, as different people engage in long-term careers in different ways. We must start with the right ingredients by building empathy and relationships while having the academic and intellectual capacity to be an education leader. The worst thing to hear in a staff room is a conversation about "Coronation Street". I want to hear about the latest research on pedagogy or child development from Yale, etc. That is professional education. We are in a strong place with teachers and we have managed to keep the quality of people going into teaching, particularly in Irish primary schools, very high.