The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) has put forward an innovative and cost-effective model for a new apprenticeship system.

The union has also warned that Institutes must be allowed to continue to provide qualifications at all levels and has also criticised a recent HEA suggestion that funding should be linked to retention targets as ‘foolhardy and anti-educational.’

TUI represents 4,000 lecturers in Institutes of Technology. The union’s annual conference begins in Tralee on Tuesday.

Comments from TUI General Secretary Peter MacMenamin

Re-modelling of apprenticeship system

“Apprenticeship numbers have plummeted due to the absolute decline of the construction industry. The risk now is that as the economy begins to improve, there will be a serious deficit of tradespeople which in itself will act as a further impediment to economic growth, a situation which last manifested itself in the mid 1990s.

Apprenticeship registrations are employer-led, but obviously most employers are not in a position currently to take on new apprentices. It follows that we now need a re-modelling or re-calibration of our apprenticeship education structures.

Institutes of Technology are already in a position to provide baseline skills in full-time educational programmes. The TUI believes that a new model of direct entry to apprenticeship is needed. This provision would involve a synergic partnership between the Institutes and FÁS and would meet the real needs of employers. It would involves a fulltime programme of study of two years for the apprentice  followed by a system of internship or placement with employers with the State paying an allowance to participants, the cost of which would be offset by what would otherwise be paid in Jobseeker’s Allowance. This would be a worthy part of the new Government’s Jobs Strategy and would also be welcomed by employers. Crucially, when the economy improves, there would be no risk of a skills deficit. A significant additional benefit is that such a model of provision would also eliminate the absurd inequity that the current system gives rise to, whereby thousands of apprentices have been made unemployed and are, therefore, unable to complete their apprenticeship

At present there are around 7,000 unemployed apprentices at various stages of training. These apprentices are in limbo due to the cessation of their sponsoring employments, as a direct result of the current recession. These could also secure full qualification by use of phase-specific variants of the re-calibrated scheme which we are suggesting. While many qualified apprentices would inevitably still have to emigrate, they have, in the TUI’s opinion, a right to obtain full qualifications before they leave and the state has an obligation to vindicate that right.  The lecturers represented by the TUI are committed to defending the best interests of their students and are willing and able to implement a new and better system of apprentice education without delay. Moreover, in relative terms, the cost to the State would be negligible.”

Institutes must not be restricted
“Ludicrously, the recent Hunt Report on Higher Education seeks to limit the levels at which Institutes of Technology can provide courses. This completely ignores fact that Institutes have developed remarkably quickly and already offer a broad and rapidly growing proportion of their programmes at postgraduate and doctoral levels. This rather patronisingly patrician suggestion by the Hunt group to wind back the clock also overlooks the fact that the Institutes of Technology are best placed of all Irish Higher Education institutions to provide the kind of applied research that incubates local initiative and enterprise.

An unfortunate by-product of recession is that students are less able to travel to pursue a third level education. It follows that the wide geographical spread of Institutes of Technology assumes an even more crucial importance in ensuring that students have a better chance of accessing higher education degrees and postgraduate qualifications in colleges relatively adjacent to their homes. Institutes of Technology – which cater for over half of all third level students in Ireland -  are also hugely responsive to the emerging needs of their local economies, including the provision of labour activation measure courses to those recently made unemployed. The educational needs of the unemployed vary, depending on the highest level of qualification previously attained. Therefore, commonsense dictates that the returning learners and their communities require qualifications at appropriate levels and that, accordingly, Institutes must be facilitated to provide programmes across the full range of levels on the National Framework of Qualifications.”

Lecturer workload & folly of Institute ‘retention targets’

“It is as plain as day that lecturers in Institutes of Technology are delivering substantially more hours of lectures per week than is the international norm and they are also required to be involved in research. Lecturers in IoTs are generally recruited with a master’s and, increasingly, PhD qualifications, as they are in universities. They teach 18 hours per week against an international norm of around 10 and a recently revealed national norm for certain universities of six.

A lecturing hour, particularly at honours degree and master’s level, requires up to four hours in preparation, reflection and administration time. In addition, lecturers have a list of over 20 other items of academic responsibility in their job specification, including research, course development and planning, along with devising all relevant syllabi on an on-going basis, extensive student continuous and final assessment, which involves setting and correction of all examinations.

There has been some recent suggestion by the HEA of attaching funding of Institutes of Technology to retention targets. This foolhardy and anti-educational business model would completely militate against those students who have taken an asymmetrical or non-traditional route to third level by measuring only output and not process. It would also affect part-time students and those who may have to take a break from education to re-enter the workforce. It would, in fact, incentivise Higher Education Institutions to adopt “no-risk” selection practices, completely at odds with lifelong learning.”

Indiscriminate cleaver of Employment Control Framework

“Very few lecturers entering the profession in recent years are permanent from day one. Typically, most work in a temporary, fixed-term capacity for four years or more, before securing hours in a permanent capacity. Very often the permanency secured is for part-time hours that provide a low level of income.

Under the harsh, and attritional Employment Control Framework and as a result of summary and arbitrary budget cuts, very many of ‘the newest in the door’ among lecturers – those in fixed term positions - are losing their positions.

These lecturers are typically employed into leading edge technological areas so the termination of their contracts runs completely and perversely contrary to the tenets of the so-called smart economy. Institutes are effectively being penalised for being innovative; such retrogressive, sledgehammer economics must be reviewed as a matter of urgency.”