Ms Natalia Leane:

This also goes back to what Mr. Twomey just said about secondary schools. I was very lucky in the secondary school I went to because it was very trades-orientated and was a mixed school. We had woodwork, metalwork and home economics, but if one looked at the other two schools in the town, they were very gender-split. The metalwork and the woodwork were in the boys’ school and the home economics was in the girls’ school. Maybe we could somehow start from secondary school and have these subject available to all of the students and, from there, tell the students that they have done the subject and they can now move on to the apprenticeship. If the subject is not available, however, the apprenticeship is not going to come up for consideration. This would have to be a full, system-wide approach where the person can be aware that he or she is able to do this, if that makes any sense.