TUI CONFERENCE: A new report is set to revolutionise the further education sector and give a substantial boost to the almost 1,500 staff who work in the area, the TUI claimed yesterday.
The report on the Post-Leaving Cert (PLC) sector was circulated to the union's conference, and according to Ms Annette Dolan, a senior official with the union, it is going to introduce a new managerial structure which is long overdue.
She said this would provide new posts for staff and better courses and services for students, and this would mean that further education could take its place alongside primary, second-level and third-level education.
Ms Dolan was one of four TUI members on the steering group that produced the report. Almost 1,500 TUI members are understood to be working - at least some of the time - in a further education college, often known as PLC colleges.
According to Ms Mary Leahy, another member of the steering group, these colleges now serve up to 25,000 students, many of them mature learners. She said that while the Government wanted to increase access to universities and institutes of technology, often the best way to tackle social inequalities in education was to promote the work of the further education sector.
She said one of the problems up to now had been giving the sector a united voice and representation. She said the report, prepared by McIver Consulting, included an important recommendation to set up a council to further the aims of the PLC colleges.
Mr Don Ryan, another steering group member, said an important concession in the report was a recommendation that the teaching hours of staff be reduced from 22 hours to 18.
He said the TUI had no problem justifying that because staff in PLC colleges were not just teaching, but also performing a range of other tasks, including devising exam papers and designing syllabi. He said because PLC courses were changing so fast many of them did not even have textbooks accompanying them.
Ms Dolan said the TUI was happy that Department of Education representatives were on the steering committee and had signed off on the recommendations. The TUI would now ensure that they were implemented, based on a timetable included in the report.
She said the new managerial structure would formalise many ad-hoc arrangements and give the sector a firmer footing. She said the structure was similar in some respects to that in the institutes of technology.
For example, the McIver report recommends that stand-alone colleges get posts such as heads of department and academic middle managers. She said the colleges offered more skills-based and vocational courses and were extremely responsive to what was happening in the workplace.
There are about 38 PLC colleges or centres with more than 150 students each, with biggest ones in Cork and Dublin.