Must try harder: this year's report card for the key figures in higher education [IrishTimes]
- Published: 17 May 2011
LEFTFIELD: IT WAS A SIGHT to remind me of my days at the coalface. On a stop-over in Dublin, I saw a young man struggling to carry what must have been 500 exam answer books to his car. As I passed, he dropped about half of them and I took pity and helped him pick them up. He told me he had four days to return them so they could be sent to the external examiner. That’s four days, and probably some of the nights too, of non-stop marking. I miss teaching students and exchanging ideas with them, but hell, I don’t miss the marking.
If I’m not marking student exam papers, maybe I can grade the efforts of some of the key figures in higher education over the past academic year instead. I’ll mark them strictly, with absolutely no grade inflation, so a good mark really means something.
Let me look at the political class first. Generally these are like the usual bunch of students – on the whole well-meaning, with some of them just a little bit dim, but mostly coming out with an unexciting but solid 2.2. We’ve had two ministers for education this term, though they are not easily comparable.
Mary Coughlan slipped into the post in a sideways (or downward) move, and in many ways she struggled in class. I cannot fault her helpfulness and her desire to make a difference, but education was not her natural field.
Ruairí Quinn is an entirely different proposition. Having been Labour spokesman for education he was well prepared for the job, and moreover clearly eager to get down to business. Since taking up the post, he has hardly put a foot wrong. He has challenged the vested interests (from the church to the trade unions), and has quickly recognised which issues need to be addressed in order to build confidence in Ireland’s education system. He easily gets a First, and his report card will recommend him highly. The only slight niggle is that he is continuing with the implementation of the Hunt Report which should just be shelved; and I am waiting to see how much of the terrible employment control framework (which appears to limit research activity) he intends to retain; again, it should just be scrapped. I would also give a good mark to former minister Batt O’Keeffe, but he has already graduated.
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