Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 2 November 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills

Leaving Certificate Reform: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

I will double-check this statistic when I go back but we have 13,000 learners with disabilities currently engaged in further education and training. A concern of ours is that there has been a decline during the period of Covid shutdown and restrictions. People with disabilities need in-person support and when we have been relying purely on online modes of learning delivery that has suffered and it has also suffered for other groups that are most at risk of exclusion. Specialist training provision is split. This is the kind of dedicated provision provided by Rehab Group, for example, and then there are people with special educational needs and disabilities involved in mainstream further education and training provision. There are two things we need to do and to get better at. We need to make sure that if one is starting off in specialist training provision, there is a pathway to move through further education and training and into higher education. The second part is that there is consistent learner support. It should not matter where one presents across the country; one should have access to the same learner support that will allow one to learn and engage with one's peers and teachers and progress along that pathway. It is not consistent at the moment and that is a big priority in the further education and training strategy.

The Deputy asked if the targets for apprenticeships are realistic. In the last apprenticeship action plan we underestimated the lead-in time to develop new apprenticeships and so there was always a lag of about a year. Before the pandemic we were already at over 6,000 new registrations per year and there is good news from 2021 already. Despite the fact that we have been operating under restrictions this year, craft apprenticeships are up by 13% on 2019 levels. As the new apprenticeships are up by about 100% on where they were in 2020, we are already seeing the growth.

We now know how long it takes to develop these new apprenticeship programmes, so moving from 6,000 to 10,000 over the five-year period is realistic.