Nurses in CAO from 2001

School-leavers applying for nurse education programmes will be competing on the basis of Leaving Certificate points beginning next year.

This marks a significant departure from the system where students had to achieve minimum educational requirements, do an assessment test, and be interviewed. However, the assessment, test and interview will be continued for those applying on the basis of mature years (23 years old on or before January 1st of the year of application).

The CAO will now process nurse education applications for the first time. A separate application form and nursing application handbook is available from the CAO, Tower House, Eglinton Street, Galway.

The form contains three lists and students can select from up to 10 general nurse education, 10 psychiatric and eight mentalhandicap programmes. The CAO handles applications for almost all third-level undergraduate programmes in the State and the process for nursing applicants closely mirrors the general applications procedure.

Applicants must list their course choices in order of preference. Points are calculated on the basis of the best six subjects taken in one sitting of the Leaving Certificate. The common points scale applies and students may use the Leaving Certificate Vocational link modules in place of a sixth subject.

As this is the first year that nursing students will be selected in this way, there is no guide to what the cut-off points will be. As always, the points level required for any specific course is determined by the number of applicants for the course, the points received by these applicants and the number of places available.

An Bord Altranais has laid down minimum education requirements and some of the higher education institutions have additional requirements. For instance, TCD requires English and one other language as well as a minimum of grade C3 in three higher-level papers.

Students who enter nurse education programmes in 2001 will complete a three-year full-time diploma programme. From 2002, nurse education will comprise a four-year full-time degree programme.

Questions about nursing and its changing education structure were answered by staff of An Bord Altranais's nursing careers centre at the Higher Options conference last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Each day, some 8,000 students converged on the RDS in Dublin, for Higher Options 2000, which was organised by The Irish Times and the Institute of Guidance Counsellors.

In addition to nursing, there was information available on a huge diversity of careers and courses with more than 250 stands representing the Irish higher and further education sectors as well as institutions from Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales.

Staff from the two central applications bodies, our own Central Applications Office (CAO), and the UK University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) were also available. A series of careers talks, including engineering, information technology, the construction industry and sales and marketing, were well received by students.

For those who were already thinking about deferring their college place for a year, three stands - The Year Out, Project Trust and Coral Cay Conversation - had interesting options that volunteers could pursue in far-flung corners of the planet.