Professor Lisa Looney:

Our touch point for transition year is often in the form of students arriving on campus to do a week of computers or chemistry. We see schools sending us students. We work particularly hard with DEIS schools in that regard in order to try to influence choices for the senior cycle and to have transition year students gain confidence in a particular area so that they will be open to choosing those kinds of disciplines and areas. There is variability across the country as to how transition year is approached. The value in allowing schools a great deal of freedom is undisputed. It is an important window of opportunity for us in third level to break down some barriers around what it is like to be in a chemistry lab at third level or to do some coding if you have not done it before. It is very valuable to us but there is variability. It is also sometimes the case that, when you offer something for a week, the school sends you a whole transition year class, only half of whom will potentially be interested in what is being offered.

That is worked out locally with partner schools. All of the universities work with partner schools in respect of their transition year, TY, programmes. However, this is again funded on a piecemeal basis. We are going back to a well or looking for a company to sponsor the Arduinos, tablets or whatever is needed. It is all done on a shoestring budget from our perspective. Getting some momentum behind sustained funding that can be relied on year in and year out would help in building those relationships. That TY intervention is a very useful step. We work with our access schools from the time students are in first year, providing maths support and so on. TY provides latitude to work with these schools in a different and possibly more creative way with regard to STEM.