Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In a shocking incident at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, GMIT, a recording showing lecturers making personal references to students when grading them in virtual assessments has outraged students and parents. As Fine Gael's spokesperson for education and further and higher education, and being from Galway, I am shocked and sorry to hear that this took place. It was disrespectful and hurtful to students who were dealing with a disruption to college life due to Covid-19 and were doing virtual presentations. I understand why students are questioning the assessment systems. What happened is unacceptable and highlights a serious level of unprofessionalism. I appreciate that GMIT's president has apologised to the students. However, we need more measures. This behaviour gives us an insight and means that we can now take action. As a Government, we can ensure that systems are in place that are accountable to students and families. We can also ensure that we support third level institutions in having the best practices in place.

Conscious and unconscious biases have a serious impact on decision making. This has been well proven by Nobel laureate Dr. Daniel Kahneman based on decades of research. Each of us judges, each of us has a bias. We are influenced by our environment and it causes us to jump to conclusions and impacts on the judgments we make. In this case, the magnitude of the decisions influencing a student's future is incredible. As part of HR requirements for staff at NUI Galway, we had to conduct unconscious bias training prior to conducting any interview in recent years. This exists at third level and should be rolled out to all staff involved in making continuous assessments.

We have an excellent education system, but there is always room for improvement. We have the highest number of students per lecturer, which leads to exhaustion and breakdown. We need more investment in third level. In the west, GMIT, IT Sligo and Letterkenny IT are planning to bring transformational change through a technological university. We must maintain the integrity of our systems, including assessment and governance systems. The Minister, Deputy Harris, is introducing governance reforms for third level. A note will go to the Cabinet and the matter will be before the Houses in quarter 1 of 2021. I call on all stakeholders to take part in this discussion and have our views heard.