Dr. Padraig Walsh:

There are obviously challenges in making vocational education more attractive because of the history and the caste system the Senator spoke about. It is very difficult to see how one can promote the current craft-based apprenticeship system to people, particularly women, because it almost excludes them from the types of profession at which they are looking. The development of that must then feed back into the secondary system. People have to see that there are opportunities for them to get into meaningful work-based systems. One of the real difficulties in vocational education is the idea that it is an off-road option and that it is there solely for people who have fallen off the wagon. What we need in many cases are good examples of people who take vocational education as a genuine career choice. There is a series of areas where people do that. We, and those who make policy, must be able to speak about that area as something that can be positively endorsed rather than something that is seen to be an off-road option. We must make it more attractive and facilitate people in seeing that there are outcomes that are not narrow or cul-de-sac outcomes for people who go down that route.