Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

There is potential for a pilot in this area. One advantage we have is that our providers are the ETBs, which have primary provision, post-primary provision and further education. We are pushing SOLAS because it is critically important to find a way to embed more vocational options and pathways within the senior cycle, but not as a separate track. There has been talk of moving to a more modular, unitised approach in general for part of the senior cycle and if we can find a way to drop in vocational model pathways as part of that, which would be available to everyone in all schools, it would be a real step forward. There is a really interesting model in Scotland, where they use the FE colleges and providers to deliver those modules in second-school settings, which could be pertinent to Ireland which has a lot of single-sex schools that do not have as much technical teaching capability.

Perhaps we could use some of our further education and training capability to deliver those options moving forward. That is the proposal we are making to the NCCA feeding into the senior cycle. I really think it is something we need to examine.