Imagining Ireland 2020

An Address by Joyce O'Connor to the Irish Association,

At the National College of Ireland there is a hub campus. We work on forty off-campus centres around the country. We work in the community and in businesses. 50% of our students are off-campus and 85% are part-time. That is not typical for educational institutes at third level sector, but that is the way education will be in the future. I'd like to look at the trends in education that are affecting us now , but that I think will affect us increasingly more and more in the future. I think one of the key challenges facing the education sector is that public funds into education are going to decrease. During the week I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 about how British Universities now are using Innovation Centres and Intellectual Property to underpin the educational aspect. In my own college we have three areas - educational activities, research and enterprise. At the moment 10% of our income comes from the enterprise sector and it is increasing despite the fact that we have to fund raise for a lot of the activities. The whole issue of public funding is going to become more and more acute. The availability of skilled lecturers is very competitive. The emergence of technology, which is there purely as a mechanism to help – it is not the dominating factor. It has also had, and will have in the future, enormous impact on education.

What I think is going to change ultimately is that we are now not only in a learner-centred curriculum, we are in a learner-centred society. In the Republic the qualifications framework and Act has a statement which has revolutionary impact on education. The learner is at the centre. Every one here today could devise a course and go to a provider to get it accredited. If we look into the future, it's learner-centred education - where learning takes place, how it is accredited, how we actually learn will ultimately change radically from the way that we see learning taking place today.

There are credible alternatives now. Many people see voluntary associations and professional bodies and specialised groups providing alternatives to the universities and to different schooling systems. They have become credible because we have now different mechanisms to be accredited and to acknowledge the learning that takes place there. We have different delivery options. There are alternatives to the classroom now – it is online, it is traditional in the community, in the work place. This will be a major revolution – the blending between learning and the workplace and educational opportunities and recognising the learning that takes place on a daily basis. Education is global. Even now we can see that no matter where you are, you can get educational qualifications from all over the world very easily, whether it is Dublin or Belfast and it is coming in from other providers. That, in fact, is tremendous because it means that world class standards are seen by everybody and they are accessible. The Internet and the web has created a different view of education.

There are new directions in how we can supply and use the best of the traditional, linking in with new ways of delivery and yet having the learner at the centre, with the coach really facilitating that learning in a completely different way.

From the demand side, John has talked about the demographics. Of course, there are going to be major changes, but the major issue is, in a knowledge-based society, we are not just talking about people from pre-school, primary and secondary level, we are talking about a society where life-long learning is and will be a reality for every one of us. We will all be continuously learning. The demographics create different kinds of opportunities but also different kinds of challenges.

Access is a major issue in both societies. In Dublin inner city two years ago 65% of the young people did not finish their leaving certificate. In some of the primary schools 50% in the inner city leave school at 12. In terms of early school learning, there is virtually no access for people in the inner city to early learning opportunities. Those issues are going to become more and more critical because I see them linked in to discussion about poverty and about the divide. I would see that education, as we all know, gives people life chances. One of the key things that our college sees that will be a key initiative is to get involved in early learning, working with young mothers when they are pregnant to create a learning community from the time their children are born right up to five years so that they are ready for school. That is in the inner city in an area which is the most wealthy area at one level and the most impoverished at another level. If the kind of demography we have been talking about and the issues around poverty are there, they all start fundamentally around educational issues.

30% of the current Irish workforce have not obtained a leaving certificate. Participation of adults in higher education is very low in the Republic. It is 6% as against 25% that the government target is for 2015. There is very low participation in life-long learning. There is about 10% as compared to about 35% in Sweden. We are 15th out of 30 OACD countries for the number of 25 – 64 cohort holding degree level qualifications. 80% of that are in the workforce now will be in the workforce in 2015. The whole issue of education and participation is a fundamental issue that we will be grappling with over the net decade and for years to come.

If we are going to be a service economy, the key issue will be up-skilling. People want holistic developments so that the nature of the education experience is going to be critical. There are new voices which are very powerful, such as the community and voluntary sector and also the business community. The business community realise that if they are not now involved in education in some way in terms of up-skilling, the competitiveness is going to become an issue. The community and voluntary sector are concerned about access to education because they realise they have a resource there. They have managed in very innovative ways to create new ways of learning which haven't been recognised. Because of the qualifications framework and new policy and legislative issues, they now have a way of achieving that. I see the empowerment of these sector with the deconstruction of the formal sector, removing the barriers. In the future the education system as we see it now will be changed radically.

In the future we all will have a SMART card that identifies all of our learning – in the home, for recreation, in the work place, in a more formal sense. We will all recognise the different types of learning that we do throughout our lifetime and that we can have "educational credits" in the bank and that we will move through a system seamlessly. That is what we can do if we have a view that in education the learner is central and the issues for institutions and for professional bodies become really acute because it means there has to be more working in partnership for this to happen. With blended learning, which is using the tutor, different kinds of mobile technology, video-streaming, etc is a facilitator to learning. While keeping a community of learning means that we can increase community collaboration connectedness by working together in that community. Education can still become a great way of bringing people together, of sharing knowledge, of enhancing skills from different societies. It also means that individuals will shape their own learning and become really more the learner and keep away from the student-master relationship. The nature of schools and colleges will change dramatically. The challenge will be that you will have some colleges focussing on research and others focussing on learning and teaching and trying to bring those together.

Because education and technology are so pervasive now, there are a lot of challenges around this. You can enhance the learning experience by using technology and by bringing experts in from different fields. One of the key areas that is a focus in colleges now is the whole area of cheating, so there is a need to look at assessments and all of those things in a different way. The issues for institutions and policy makers for the future are not just administrative. The issue is how are we going to enable people to increase their access to education in a way that enables them to reach their potential and enables society to become more competitive and to move the divide. Unless we tackle that issue, the issues about poverty and skills will always be there. We will be talking about old and new working together, not as competitors, but breaking out of a more traditional way of looking how learning is delivered and by looking at the issues of quality and performance. The key issue is to have a vision and a philosophy that underpins education for all. We have the means and technology, innovation and creativity to redefine the learning situation. The learner is at the centre. Early childhood learning is a fundamental issue and I feel sorry that, in the debate about child care, early childhood learning is not an issue. If we know what is possible we can make a difference to build on that. We know the trends and that people want different things out of life. The revolution is underway because the context is there. What we need is a change in attitude and providers and professionals to grab an opportunity that can make 2020 a real opportunity for education and upgrading of skills a reality.

Q1: It did seem that the new approach in education has revolutionary implications for, not just for colleges but for the whole provider of services.

A1: There is no reason why learning can't take place in libraries. It is just to see all these opportunities as learning centres.