The Government has rejected as unrealistic and impractical an opposition proposal to abolish the Leaving Certificate and third-level fees, and to allow students open access to whatever third-level course or apprenticeship they wish to study.
Open-access education is in place in a number of EU countries, including France.
The Solidarity-People Before Profit private member’s motion also calls for an expansion of higher-education and apprenticeship places by 25,000 to meet expected demand, and a commensurate increase in staff.
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said there is a need to offer a better future to students who had suffered the stress, anxiety and hardship of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Dún Laoghaire TD pointed out that “once upon a time, it was considered unthinkable” to have free and “open access to secondary education”.
Looking back now “we see it as monstrous that we would ration or limit the number of places available in secondary education”.
He said it was equally “irrational, and frankly lacking in vision, to believe that we should still ration or limit access to higher and further education” and he said currently one in six first-year students drop out of college.
Third-level funding
But Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said it would not be realistic or practical to abolish the Leaving Certificate and fees and to give everyone access to any course they wish.
Not having this exam “or some other form of assessment at the end of school would create great difficulties” and he questioned how sustainable funding for third level of the quality needed could be provided under this model.
He added that “when countries such as Italy have attempted to introduce open access, they have ended up with very high drop-out rates. That’s not desirable either.”
Mr Boyd Barrett said access to higher and further education is “critical” for the 80,000 people who have applied for college this year and for thousands of people who may have to reskill because of decimated livelihoods.
Irish third-level and postgraduate students “are suffering the highest fees levied anywhere in the European Union, now that the UK has left”.
Many “are living in absolute poverty on miserable stipends, while suffering extortionate fees. Many of those who want to return to education to reskill or retrain are blocked from doing so by these high fees and the cost of accessing further education later in life.”
Part-time lecturers
About 50 per cent of lecturing staff in this country are on part-time or temporary contracts, including 35 per cent of lecturers, he said.
“Postgraduate students are living in poverty. The drop-out rate in this country is terrible. One-sixth of all first-year students in higher education drop-out.”
The Tánaiste said, however, that “vision is one thing” but “there is, however, a difference between vision and practical action”.
Mr Varadkar said he understood the motives behind the motion “and I can certainly see how they would be very appealing” but it was neither realistic nor practical.
A system of assessment would have to replace the Leaving Cert and the cost of the abolition of fees would be “unsustainable” when “we are already borrowing €19 billion a year”.
He said access to whatever course a student wanted to study would need to demonstrate “where the laboratories, anatomy rooms, dentist chairs and practical placements for apprentices would be found”.
