Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have come here for one reason, namely, to ask the Minister to lift the status of further education in Ireland. As Senators O'Donnell, Bradford and Quinn have said, for too long further education has been seen as the poor relation in the education system. The reason it must not be that is that every child, every student and every learner is valid and young people learn differently. For the six years before I came to this House I earned my living working with learners up and down the country in my own business. While I had been an academic previously - a teacher and then a lecturer - when I decided to go into politics I knew I needed a more flexible approach and set up my own business. I worked with students, parents and teachers around how to help them achieve in education.

I learned that one third of our children know exactly what they want and can find that through the CAO system, another third have an idea but can make poor choices, and the other third do not have a clue. The final third can end up in further education but, by and large, they are learners by doing. This ties in completely with what Senator Quinn said. They are valid learners. They are very exciting. By doing a number of assessments with them I found that they are some of our most creative learners and have the greatest potential if their creativity is harnessed for entrepreneurship in the future. They can be lost in the education system because it has stopped valuing them. I ask the Minister to lift the status of further education.

I support completely the apprenticeship model, the employer-led learning and agree that incentives need to be found for employers to support them to have work-based learning and offer apprenticeships, be it tax breaks or innovation vouchers. I am aware there are innovation vouchers worth €5,000 each but I do not think there is a huge take-up. If that could be transferred, as a benefit or a gain to these employers, it would be great. At the end of the day what matters is that all our young people feel they are valued in this country and have a place. There is a need for more cost-benefit analysis of our education system.

Let us look at the CAO system and the drop-out levels after first term. A huge amount of money is lost to families and to the State because of poor choices and lack of appropriate career guidance in early second level. There is a dearth of appropriate early guidance. It even needs to start in sixth class. There are others here who would probably support me on that.

In Europe there is the artisan and the craftsperson who are valued in a way that they were probably valued here 20 or 30 years ago but that had fallen out of favour and out of fashion, so to speak, with the drive to a more academic approach. I think I heard Senator O'Donnell say as I came into the House that the vocational education system had been dumbed down, that is because the vocational education system has moved to a more academic approach as points became so valued. I was the chair of County Galway VEC from 2006 to 2008, having come from a voluntary secondary approach and a third level and academic approach, but I learned about the vocational education system being the only provider for all types of learners. We need that approach as a learning level but we also need to show how that can be converted into jobs. This is where I believe the apprenticeship model will come into its own in a way that is not yet realised. When I see young people get a job that is linked with their learning, and even when it is not linked with their learning, they grow, they get self-esteem and find a new purpose.

This is one of the best things we can do for Ireland. We are not getting the return we need. We need to lift the status of further education and by using incentives to shine a light on it.