Your education questions answered by Brian Mooney.

I live in Sligo and my daughter is interested in applying for art and design courses. She has been researching options in the four ITs nearest home - IT Sligo, Galway-Mayo IT, Letterkenny IT and Athlone IT. They all offer ordinary degrees in art, design or graphic design.

 I cannot understand why the entry requirements differ - even though they are all ordinary degrees. For example on their websites, Athlone IT, Sligo IT and Galway-Mayo IT all state that their art and design courses at ordinary degree/National Diploma level require Grade D3 at ordinary level in five subjects in the Leaving Certificate, while the LYIT requires 6 D3s and 140 points.

Different requirements are given in prospectuses and other publications she has brought home from school. Why is there such a difference between the websites and the published requirements? Why are there differences between ITs if they all offer the same qualification in the same area?

It would seem that the introduction of the ordinary degree, to replace the diploma, has caused the institutes of technology to change their entry requirements in an unco-ordinated manner, causing much confusion and disappointment to current Leaving Certificate students, who chose their subject options in 2003, based on the information available at the time. I believe that students should not be faced with changes in entry requirements once they have made their subject choices in fifth year. I hope the institutes of technology reflect on the difficulty these new regulations are causing current Leaving Certificate students, and leave in place the entry requirements that existed in September 2003.

I have lived in Poland for two years and am taking the International Baccalaureate. I plan to take the exams in May and will then move back to Ireland. I was very interested in your article about business programmes in third-level education. Are there any specific requirements that I need to study business next year? I am also interested in going to one of the Erasmus schools before returning to Ireland. I plan to study in one of these schools for a year and would like to know if the course will be counted in Ireland when I return.

When presenting qualifications other than the Irish Leaving Certificate, it is advisable to contact the various Institutions to which you are applying. Most will operate some form of equivalence between other recognised school-leaving examinations and the Leaving Certificate. As the International Baccalaureate is a well-recognised exam, it should be easy enough to establish how the various Institutions rate it. The institutes of technology have published an explanatory booklet on how they score exams other than the Leaving Certificate. This is available on the CAO web site, www.cao.ie, or from any institute of technology.

The universities will have their own scoring mechanisms and the four constituent universities of the National University of Ireland will operate an agreed system. You should contact their admissions offices for details of the scoring system. In any case, you will need to meet matriculation as well as entry requirements.

This means if Mathematics HD3 is required you will have to present a similar grade for that subject in the International Baccalaureate. If you attend a university abroad, there is no guarantee that the course will earn credits in an Institution here. It depends on what course you undertake and on which Irish Institution, you gain entry to.

Brian Mooney is president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors. E-mail questions to bmooney@irish- times.ie