Mr. Ciar?n Duffy:

I also mentioned that. Separate from that, we need to look at the idea of who is accessing places in our professional masters in education, PME, courses. When I did my equivalent to the PME, which was not today nor yesterday and which was the higher diploma in education, HDip Ed, you just applied based on the results you had got the previous year in your exams. It was nothing to do with the subject you were studying or the subject in which you were hoping to become qualified as a teacher. I wonder if that is still the situation. If so, then we might look at a way of ring-fencing the subject areas that our prospective PME students, as opposed to those doing concurrent degrees, will be doing for their post-graduate qualifications and see if we are meeting the subject requirements where we have gaps in second level schools. Might we be turning away potential maths and science teachers without realising what their skillsets are?

There are examples of financial incentives elsewhere. For example, in London some people receive additional stipends by virtue of the subjects they teach or by virtue of their working in inner cities or large urban areas. We already have examples where we give additional stipends to those working in Gaeltacht regions. You could argue there is already a disparity between people who are already in the same system. I do not see why we could not investigate the idea of financially supporting, whether by reducing or removing fees or some sort of tax incentives, for those who want to move into the area of STEM education.