Ms Edel Doherty:

With regard to the transition from second level to third level, we were starting to see more students getting into third level, but also more students having to repeat a year, getting stuck or dropping out. We looked back and set up a transition year project three years ago, to bring in students from across the country and give them the skills they miss in the curriculum as it stands, which is points based or just about getting to the leaving certificate. We focused on additional skills for students such as orientation; mobility; learning to use their equipment properly and learning self-advocacy and all those different skills they needed, so that they would be better able to cope with the transition to third level. It has been a considerable success in that sense. However, we are only just at the start of that process of identifying what is happening with the students at that level, to give them the skills to be able to get through third level and beyond.