very bright young professional who was
downtown and city in the south to the
country shopping with his mother and
when they finished shopping they were
heading home and this rather fortunate
young man
tripped and he slipped into the river
and his mother was naturally alarmed she
was also very conscious of his place in
the community so she went around
shouting at the top of her voice help
help my son the surgeon is drowning with
the emphasis on the word surgeon and
fortunately he was saved as an equally
bright young person nearby who was able
to swim and jumped in to the river and
rescued him now this very bright young
person had never gone to university in
fact had left school early because she
had to scientist that she wasn’t going
to follow the academic route into
University she wanted to do an
apprenticeship which she did and I was
so successful Ashes that she set up her
own company and hired quite a number of
staff whether she actually needed a
surgeon or not I don’t know so I don’t
know whether she actually interviewed
him but I think the story tells us a lot
about our attitudes towards education
and education is one of those topics
upon which are all experts everyone here
we all have one thing in common we all
went to school right well I assume
everybody here went to school you don’t
actually have to put your hand up if you
didn’t go but having gone to school that
makes you all an authority on the system
I have yet to meet anybody and I doubt
if anybody here knows anybody who
doesn’t have views and education we
might know how to solve the neverending
health crisis we might know how to fix
the economy but when it comes to
education everybody knows what’s wrong
with us and everybody knows how to make
a rice we could say that education is
deeply ingrained in our psyche it’s in
our mindset so the way we think and
generally I think that’s very good but I
think unfortunately sometimes we tend to
look upon education as a hierarchy with
universities
the very top and we just have this
subconscious belief that only the very
brightest and the best and the most
deserving gets University and get these
professional qualifications I believe
that we should look upon education and
training as a continuum which people can
dip in and out of all during their lives
now education systems throughout the
world have one thing in common
young people are staying in the
education systems much longer than they
used to and participation rates are
rising everywhere and the majority of
those young people take an examination
at terminal examination at the end of
their secondary schooling or their high
school whatever the colors it could be
the a-level in the UK community
International Baccalaureate the abattoir
in Germany are in Hong Kong the diploma
of secondary education in Ireland of
course we have the leaving certificates
it’s an exam now taken by well over 90%
of our young people it’s a very high
finishing race first second-level
schooling and it’s become a high status
exam and a high pressurising exam and
young people will tell you that they
feel under pressure in the run-up to the
exam and during the exam itself in
Ireland of course we do things
differently
we rely much more so than a lot of other
countries on determined and written
examination other countries make use of
practicals and oils and portfolios and
projects so men would have continuous
assessment and some element of teacher
assessment of their own students for
exam purposes we don’t rely almost
entirely on a written final exam as
we’re sort of Samaritan right in session
for those young people and you would
hear them complain sometimes that they
have so writing armed afterwards and
it’s hardly surprising but we do
something else differently in Ireland as
well we give it an extraordinary amount
of media coverage in fact no other
country in the world gives the
examination quite the same coverage as
we do we devote acres of space to an
analysis of the questions
the reaction of teachers and students
and if the reaction is a very strong
reaction but yet at the front page of
the newspapers or on television or on
radio and in fact the coverage we give
us has been studied by researchers from
Oxford University Center for educational
assessment and Queen’s University
Belfast and they concluded that the
coverage given in the Irish media and
I’m including social media and this is
extraordinary by international
comparisons if it also looked at by the
head of journalism in the national
university of ireland galway and i got
to take out an oath and course or
accurately because she’s an academic as
well so i’ve had me a curse on this she
wrote the following every June on the
Wednesday following the bank holiday
exam fever of epidemic proportions
appears to infect the media mindset the
temperature seems to rise year-on-year
and then the killer line the acres of
news coverage of the state examinations
equation with those of some natural
disaster or national emergency I’d have
to say guilty your honor
and the so extent because I was an
education rifle for quite a long time
and probably contributed to some of that
hype the exam get it huge coverage at
the spotlight the media spotlight
switches off abruptly when the exams
finishes but then it comes on again with
the greater intensity when the results
come out in August again a whole forest
of trees are felled to produce
newspapers which produce huge
supplements we contain graphs of the
number of awards in each subjects and
who got what grades how many grades were
given in every single subject and
they’re also very good tables which show
and not surprise anybody here that
Carolyn’s always do better than boys
when it comes to exam results with one
or two small exceptions and but the
coverage is really intense and then the
the the grades that those young people
gasp are converted into
called points for entry to higher
education but what’s interesting to note
is obviously together and they grade
you’ve got a higher points and then if
you get a D grade but I think what’s
interesting to note is the way the
question has changed and puffy asked
students when they get their results
when I did the Leaving Certificate a few
years ago and I was simply asked what
how’d you get on and so I was able to
boast about results in English and my
favorite subject was actually Latin not
the most popular subject nowadays and I
was able to class over than other
subjects where my performance was not
described as stellar it for the mildly
like maths and applied maths but I would
get at that away with that nowadays
because nowadays students are asked only
one question how many points did you get
it says if there’s a law that says you
have to get points for for entry to
higher education and the more points you
get the best room and if you get really
high points you have to go and do a
professional course someplace it’s some
university no university really suited
for a lot of young people but not for
everybody because there are other
options so there are other routes to
success and there’s a straight line
obviously from A to B but there’s also
what we call that the scenic route and
quite a lot of young people take that
and they can go in different routes by
ways of you in the equatorial the sexes
even they can come out of those and they
can go on a different path if they’re
aware of the various and the increasing
number of options that are available but
it’s not always that easy for them to
take that different and sometimes more
interesting routes and I know one young
person she a friend of my daughter’s she
was under pressure from the school
because she did very well in the Leaving
Cert to go to university but she decides
that she wants to do a further education
course in a rock school she had visions
of managing a rock band
and she didn’t realize her ambition and
that’s regards but what she did do was
develop her interest in the whole 80
area and set up her own company which is
now very successful and I met her at a
40th birthday party last week it wasn’t
mine in case you’re wondering and and
she was just back from our eighth trip
this year alone the states and I stayed
far on business purposes and so she had
gone down that scenic route if you will
it but as I said it’s not always easy to
take that route there is pressure from
their peers especially from parents and
except her parents were very
enlightening and they let her do what
she would let her pursue her own course
and there’s pressure from the schools in
some respects sometimes I think schools
subconsciously conveyed the message that
a khadeem in traditional academia
specialer somehow and I say it’s not
necessarily it’s not another example of
this kind of if you will academic
snobbery that I that is it also a true
story it involves the agency that the
government set up many years ago to
encourage multinationals to come to
Ireland and create jobs the Industrial
Development Authority and official from
the IEA was in a state-of-the-art IT
plant in the West of Ireland he was
rated to be some of the executives of
the American owned company I was
chatting to the receptionist a very
bright young woman and he said to her do
not think of doing a course than IT you
know you clearly get a job inside you’d
haven’t you learned a lot more money and
you’d have a much better career path you
could end up in the management position
here in a few years she said though
revealingly Arnaud says she my parents
would never let me work in a factory and
unfortunately that attitude I think
still prevails to some extent in Ireland
I don’t think we value vocational
training apprenticeships skilled
employment and off in this country I
give the example of the WorldSkills
competition which is held every two
years
not for nothing
as the skills Olympics they’re run in a
very competitive atmosphere you know
hundreds not thousands of young people
from all over the world competing in
skilled areas like aircraft maintenance
electrical engineering craft design
welding and so forth and Irish
apprentices traditionally do very well
in indoor scale as Olympics but I don’t
believe they’re honored sufficiently by
the wider society and I’d have to say by
the media and by the political
establishment when they come home the
next the 44th international competition
will be held at Abu Dhabi next year I
would hope that for two things warned
that the Irish participants do when once
again which I’m certain that they will
and they will come home laden with gold
and silver and bronze medals but I’d
really like to see them greeted at the
airport by the president of the country
who congratulate them and what they have
done for Ireland because they really are
ambassadors for this country and I think
they should be honoured as such and talk
about honoring other countries also
honor not just their their winners but
they also honor and value highly their
traditions of vocational training in
company training apprenticeships in ways
that we don’t always yes I’m thinking
particularly of Germany which has a
long-established tradition in that
regard and it’s a very close
relationship between the employers and
vocational colleges they design programs
and the right balance of on mix of
theory and practice and about half of
young Germans go into this system every
year and it’s been very successful in
terms of keeping the economy as an
expanding pace and holding that pace
during the recent recession because
during the recession youth unemployment
in Germany stayed static but it rose
very dramatically in other countries
including our own but also Italy Spain
and Greece
and unfortunately and many many young
people had to emigrate from from those
countries including your own but there
but there are very significant changes
taking place in education and training
in this country we have new
apprenticeships which are long overdue
and very well can we do traineeships new
internships we have a strategic plan for
the development of further education and
training or making greater use of
information technologies and other means
of communication and I think this is all
to the goods but we also much more
importantly we now have the structures
in place to create a world-class further
education and training system the
changes I’ve described amount to a
revolution if you will but so far it’s
been very quiet revolution I honestly
think we should be shouting about all
these changes from the rooftops so that
everybody will sit up and listen only
then I think when everybody realized
that there really are many different avenues to success thank you