Teaching Matters: Strangely, one of the most critical recommendations in the recent OECD report is also the one that has so far had the least discussion. This is the need to create a framework for integrated planning, to make sure our investment in third-level education lines up with our national goals, writes Danny O'Hare
Our present policies, as the report puts it: " . . . seem to have been developed in isolation from one another and there is little capacity for systematically connecting them one with another, or linking them to a long-term tertiary education strategy, or to a broader strategy relating to the economy as a whole".
The OECD highlights a crippling paradox at the heart of Irish education. On the one hand, the Government has set a clear goal for education: to help Ireland to a leadership role in the knowledge-based society. But on the other hand, it has no way to make sure that what it spends on education will focus on that goal.
We have seven universities and a plethora of institutes of technology (IoTs). Each pursues its own interests as it fights for a share of a finite pot of Government cash.
We tend to forget what the OECD saw so clearly: in a small country, no single institution can excel at everything. Every university has its own strengths and weaknesses. The IoTs have a distinct role in the economy which they often don't realise.
To reach the overall national goal, some institutions need to specialise in particular areas, while leaving others for different colleges to pursue. Some tasks can be achieved only by institutions working together.
It is surely tempting fate to believe the ideal way will somehow magically emerge from the present cut-throat competition, without any direction to guide it. But is this a recipe for even more Government intervention at third level?
Perhaps it is that fear that has kept the universities and IoTs so quiet on the subject. One of the most prized attributes of any educational institution is its autonomy, and the perennial ambition is to extend that rather than see it eroded. One might think that for the institutions to push this idea would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.
But that fails to realise how a planning framework could work in practice. For Government on its own to impose the strategic dimension would be ineffective, quite apart from unacceptable. But it is equally unrealistic to expect the institutions to supply it, either by joint effort or by default through unbridled competition.
The only workable way to do it is together. Government and institutions should sit down together to plan how the available resources can be deployed most effectively in the national interest. This approach offers institutions a much better way forward than they have now.
Experience abroad offers us useful examples of the value of having an integrated planning framework and the dire consequences of trying to do without it.
Finland shows the way. The system there attaches great importance to dialogue between the institutions and the co-ordinating body. Meetings take place at least every quarter and involve senior faculty figures and officials of the Finnish ministry of education (in Ireland that body is the HEA - or its successor, as envisaged by the OECD). This approach contrasts with the Irish situation where dialogue generally takes place only when crises - for example, in funding or in relation to student fees - occur.
Finnish debate is fully informed, based on a thorough analysis of data and trends. One of the outcomes is that experimental initiatives can be undertaken by institutions, individually or in groups, to explore possible solutions to identified problems.
The Finns also have an agreed contract between individual institutions and the co-ordinating body. An annual formal agreement includes agreed targets for the institution to achieve. But the co-ordinating body is only minimally involved in the detail of institutional management. The system is based on a planning culture, excellent and comprehensive data, trust and open dialogue.
By way of terrible contrast, the absence of a strategy is demonstrated by Britain. There the competition between institutions has meant the wholesale closure of departments in some important disciplines.
As Tony Ashmore, director of education at the Royal Society of Chemistry, put it recently: "Individual institutions are making decisions about what subjects they provide on their own local criteria, so you have a strategically important subject like chemistry that has now disappeared from one part of England. These are not unreasonable people running these institutions, but in the end they have to decide what is best for their universities. We have a funding regime which funds universities according to what they want to do - it preserves academic freedom, but doesn't necessarily mean that the country's needs are met."
Let us hope that in Ireland in the future whatever we spend on third-level education is directed to meeting our needs. The OECD has shown us clearly the way to do it.
Danny O'Hare is a former president of DCU
Teaching Matters returns in September
