Provost Patrick Prendergast today said that “blanket statements” applying to all courses and institutions were “unhelpful”, in a meeting of Higher Education Minister Simon Harris and the presidents of Ireland’s universities.
In a tweet, the Provost said that, as chair of the Irish Universities Association (IUA), he had also called on the government to give universities the autonomy “to balance in-person and online teaching”.
“Campuses are well managed and can be among the safest places for students”, he added. “We all agreed that management of the behavioural challenge will require us to trust the students and work with them.”
In recent weeks, the government has forced Ireland’s universities to move much of their teaching online, unless the teaching must be in-person, as is the case with practical subjects and laboratory work.
The university presidents and Harris also discussed the potential influx of students into colleges as a result of mistakes made in the calculated grading system, which meant that some 6,500 students were incorrectly given lower marks.
Yesterday, Minister for Education Norma Foley said that any student who was marked incorrectly and therefore missed out on their preferred course will be given the opportunity to move into that course.
Following the meeting today, Harris pledged to work with higher education institutions to secure additional places for students downgraded by the error in calculated grades.
In a video posted on Twitter following the meeting, Harris praised the “can-do attitude” of the university presidents and said that: “We’ve been working really hard already to put lots of extra spaces before the calculated grades result was announced. That work will now continue.”
“As soon as the Department of Education has bottomed out the problem and transferred the issue to the CAO to process, these universities will work and will link to help identify extra places and the government will help in terms of providing extra funding that may be required.”
“Every year the system has to deal with what we call successful appeals, where lots and lots of students appeal their leaving cert, it’s examined and maybe they get upgraded”, he added. “Last year 3,000 students had a successful upgrade of their leaving cert and that resulted in 600 of them requiring new offers, all but three of them got that offer in this academic year.”
In the Provost’s tweet regarding the interview, he added that universities were “concerned about the students”, and that he had told the minister that the problems could be solved “with flexibility on our side matched by funding from the Minister”.
“It is the right thing to do for these much-put-upon students”, he added.
