Mr. Ryan Sharpe:

One of the big things I got from that is that the leaving certificate is a competition throughout the whole of Ireland to see who can get the most points. That causes stress for many people. As the Chairman said, in conversation it is all about what college someone is going to or what course they are doing. It just feels like a very big competition and we need to change how we look at it. Doing a course is regarded differently from doing an apprenticeship. There should not be a stigma around that. I know people who do apprenticeships who are much more successful, but more importantly much happier than people who go to college and do a course they do not like just because of the social pressure to go to college and say they have a course. We need to look at that completely and work out why there is such a stigma around getting apprenticeships.