Dr. Mary-Liz Trant:

It is about exposing all our young people throughout the education system to what is out there and the opportunities. There are ways of doing it. For example, we have been running a competition at second level on apprenticeships and green skills. It builds awareness of how completing an apprenticeship and getting a job contributes to the awareness of green skills and to how companies develop green skills awareness. That competition has worked successfully at second level with schools, youth reach centres and early school-leaving centres. Students have loved it because it is an opportunity for them to work individually or together, explore the range of apprenticeship options available and express their commitment to green skills and climate action. The take-up has been really good. That model fits in well to transition year but other years have done it as well. It would fit into the primary curriculum for teachers working with classes on making sure there is awareness of all that knowledge. It can be built into geography and into the various civil and social areas of work that are now in the curriculum. It is not about adding on something new but integrating that exploration, a bit of fun and knowledge into what is already going on. We have examples of what is working and they can be built and developed. The challenge is how we all join up.

I was in Sligo for the national conference of guidance counsellors last month and got a great response. Sometimes the feedback we hear is it is really hard to get the message through to guidance counsellors about apprenticeships, for example. The feedback we got in Sligo was there is a huge appetite for it, wanting to know what is going on and to share the information with students. There is a body of work for us to do on the Department side and the agency side working together to figure out how to integrate awareness and knowledge. Adding further education and apprenticeships to the CAO platform last year was a huge step forward in terms of putting out all the information. We have more to do on that and on innovative ways of doing it. It is not about piling on more, but finding creative ways of building it into the experience and into what primary and secondary level students are learning in school.