Education Minister, Noel Dempsey, explains why he favours changes in entry.to health science courses
The publication last week of the first round of CAO offers has, as ever, generated extensive media coverage. It has also been the trigger for a whole range of emotions in thousands of homes all over the country, as the long wait ended for individual applicants and their anxious families to discover whether or where they will be going to college this autumn. Countless human stories of joy, relief, surprise and, unfortunately, deep disappointment will have unfolded.
The CAO process is rightly widely respected for its transparency and fairness. That is not to say, however, that we should lose sight of the enormous pressures that can be visited on individual students in trying to attain the points required for entry to their course of choice. At the upper end of the scale the requirements can be particularly harsh. This has come into focus again with a further increase in the points required for entry to medicine.
Indeed, we have now reached a stage where students hoping to study medicine or certain other health sciences courses are required to attain close to a perfect Leaving Certificate. While this is the result of a rational and equitable process of matching supply of places with demand for them, it has created an intensely competitive culture that is putting the young people concerned under huge pressure.
This pressure is having a negative knock-on effect on second-level education, where the provision of a holistic education is undermined by an increasingly narrow results focus. There is also a danger that students are being corralled into a career-oriented choice at an early age for potentially the wrong reasons. This results from a culture where high achievers at second level are encouraged to utilise their points potential by opting for a high-points course and ultimately finding themselves embarked on a tight career path for which they may not be best suited.
Clearly there is a need to take the heat out of this points pressure. That is why I announced last week that I am accepting the recommendations of a report into alternate methods of entry into high-points health science professional courses. The report, commissioned by the Higher Education Authority at my request, recommends that entry to these programmes should be on a postgraduate basis. This would mean that students hoping to study medicine, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy or radiography would in future undertake any primary degree of their choice (for example, in the arts, humanities, sciences) before taking a decision to enter those specialised disciplines at postgraduate level.
There are good reasons for adopting this approach.
It will eliminate the high points associated with entry to these programmes and enable second-level students to select undergraduate courses that are in line with their personal preferences and aptitudes, enhancing their educational experience at both senior cycle and undergraduate levels.
It will ensure that an individual's decision to enter one of the health science professions is made at a more mature age and for the right reasons. This should improve retention rates and morale in the professions and will encourage a broader range of well-rounded entrants.
It will facilitate improved manpower planning for the professions in question. Shorter postgraduate programmes mean there will be a quicker lead time from when an intake is increased to when the additional qualified personnel are available for employment.
In designing the new programmes, opportunities will be available for common modules to be developed for each of the health disciplines. This will address a key recommendation of the National Health Strategy for facilitating enhanced inter-disciplinary team working.
Development of the new programmes will also allow opportunities for introducing best-practice teaching methodologies, thus shifting emphasis from didactic teaching to small group work.
The implementation of these new arrangements will require a whole range of complex issues to be addressed in consultation with all of the interests involved. My aim would be to introduce the change in medicine initially and a taskforce being jointly established by my Department and the Department of Health and Children will have a key role in this regard. I hope to see the new postgraduate programme in place by 2007, with the final intake to existing undergraduate medical programmes to occur in 2004.
The bottom line objectives are that the quality of education and training of our health professionals is maintained and enhanced, that an appropriate social mix of entrants to these professions is achieved, that we attract those who are best suited for the job rather than just the highest academic achievers and, fundamentally, that individual students can benefit from an education that helps them to maximise their personal potential and life opportunities, free from the pressures of a points race that has gone into over-drive.