Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes. My Department, and most specifically our National Apprenticeship Office, are working tirelessly to try to grow a coalition of people to support and promote apprenticeships through engaging with parent councils, boards of management, trade unions, teacher union representative bodies and guidance counsellors. There is a legitimate issue here that we need to address. I have tasked the National Apprenticeship Office with coming up with ideas around this because I am critical of the league tables. However, I also think it is a little bit on us because we do not provide alternative data. I am not speaking for The Irish Times, but they will say "well that is the only data we have". We need to do better at capturing the numbers of people from secondary schools who have gone on to apprenticeships. In that way we can publicly reward and recognise the schools that promote what might traditionally have been known as vocational training, crafts and training, thereby helping us to meet our housing and climate targets, among others. We have a piece of work to do to capture that data and present a much more holistic picture of what success in school looks like.

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