Dáil debates

Wednesday, 19 December 2018

Saincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Debate

Third Level Admissions Entry Requirements

5:55 pm

Photo of Willie PenroseWillie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this important issue for discussion. I am glad that the Minister of State, Deputy Mitchell O'Connor, is present. She is very familiar with the import of this issue and I have no doubt she is eager to resolve it in a positive way. It is a very invidious situation affecting a large cohort of young graduates and undergraduates. Concerns over this important issue have been brought to my attention and that of my colleagues, Deputies Sherlock and Brendan Ryan, over the past month or so. I have no doubt that several other Members have also been alerted to the grave unfairness and injustice perpetrated upon students who completed their leaving certificate prior to September-October 2017 when changes to the minimum entry grades in Irish, English and maths for entry to primary teacher education programmes were introduced. My colleagues have made strong representations on the issue. Like them, I have no problem with the Minister of State or her officials raising the minimum entry requirements in those core subject areas as part of a policy objective of ensuring quality teaching and learning in primary schools. I am aware that the proposals emanate from the 2011 literacy and numeracy strategy and reviews thereto and that the Teaching Council had an input into them.

The changes in the minimum entry requirements take effect from 2019 and students who entered the leaving certificate cycle in 2017 and will graduate in 2019 are aware of it. However, I am focusing on a specific cohort of students. What will happen to the many students who entered degree courses between 2013 and 2018 and wish to pursue a postgraduate masters in primary education? What about those who completed their undergraduate degree some years before deciding to apply to the masters programme? They may have completed their primary degree in 2016 or 2017. When such students sat their leaving certificate four, five or six years ago, they were assured by guidance counsellors that the minimum entry requirements were at a particular level. However, the goalposts have now been moved by officials - I am not stating that the Minister of State did so - and deprived those students of the ability to qualify for the masters in primary education at a time when teachers are badly needed. Deputies complain that teachers are going to Dubai. The Government will drive them all out of the country. The Ceann Comhairle will have to go back to Dubai and get a donkey on which to bring the teachers back. We are driving them out of the country.

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