Higher Education Authority an tÚdarás um Ard-Oideachas HEA

27^th August, 2008

Message Must Be Pushed Home: Stay in Education or Face Employment Difficulties in the Future

As schools around the country prepare to resume, the Chief Executive of the Higher Education Authority (HEA), Tom Boland has stated that the message that students should stay in education at least until Leaving Certificate and ideally into further and higher education must be delivered again and again to every young person and parent and in every community.

Warning that employment in Ireland of the future will mostly only be available to higher education graduates or those with adaptable skills, Tom Boland stated that Ireland needs to set itself the objective of ensuring that every child starting school this September gets to finish his or her Leaving Certificate and that they are then encouraged to go on to third level or into a recognised training or further education programme. Apart from the benefit to the individual, the achievement is essential, he argues, if Ireland is to first hold, and then improve, its place in the global knowledge society.

He also pointed out that the CSO labour market figures just published indicated that third level graduates were far less likely to be unemployed than non graduates. The figures for March-May 2008 show that while the unemployment rate was 5.5% for the entire population between 15 and 64 years old, for those with at least a degree it was 2.4%. This compares to over 9% for those who left school before Leaving Certificate.

Tom Boland said,

“We’ve got to be ambitious. Success, in social and economic terms, in the twenty-first century will be dictated by the level of knowledge and skills available to a country and Ireland must be with the global leaders. Ensuring that everyone has access to higher education can no longer be viewed as a desirable social goal only - it is also in fact an economic necessity. The state’s entire focus must be driven by the objective of a highly skilled society.”

He added that the message must be most strongly communicated in communities where there was a higher tradition of early school leaving and that getting that message across must be a prime concern of business, teachers, community groups and families as well as government and its agencies.

At present, over 55% of the Leaving Certificate age cohort go on to third level, up from 44% a decade ago but the Government has set a target that 72% of 17 to 19 year olds will go into higher education by 2020.

The Higher Education Authority is the independent statutory body charged with advising Government on higher education policy and for funding our universities and third level colleges.

ENDS

For further details, contact

Malcolm Byrne,

Head of Communications,

Higher Education Authority

(01) 2317162

(086) 2237102