Irish Election - Coverage of Irish Politics, News and Current Affairs

We had this up yesterday about the Fine Gael proposals on Schools and the piece about cheap laptop provision to all students. Hanafin has laughed off the possibility of supplying laptops to all 344,000 secondary pupils for a total of €23m – or just under €67 each. The main reason is the requirement for software suites [...]

Forensic Science is one of if not the most popular science subject in UK universities. Thousands apply to do it. In my Uni it is not unusual to see a group of students out on the grass dressed up in the full gear marking of a section of grass. So what are the job prospects [...]

Fine Gael have announced their policies on Science. I haven’t much time to comment on them but here is a few quick points.

Those with an interest in third-level education will no doubt recall the interest sparked by one Frank Prendergast Jr, whose High Court challenge to the quota system for medicine courses has been the cause of much discussion in educational circles.

On the day when it also emerged that the proposed ban on incandescent light bulbs might contravene EU regulations, the government has used a classic late Friday news dump to ensure the row over water charges for schools will continue to rumble. The issue is the clarification issued for Bertie Ahern’s pre-Christmas declaration that [...]

Every 3 years the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development does a standardised test to measure the educational attainment of secondary school students across many countries in the world.  The point of the test is to be able to compare how educational systems are doing across countries despite differences in structure.  It’s very mixed news [...]

So the idiotic debate on College entry from Private “grind School” roles on again.
MONEY still talks when it comes to going to university, the 2007 college entry figures confirm.Grind and fee-paying schools continue to dominate the tables of feeder schools for a number of leading third-level institutions.
 

Today I read with increasing incredulity, the attempt being made by Prof. William Reville, Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at one of our state-funded universities, UCC, to say that science and religion were not so different after all.
This is one of many attempts on this island to soften up the teaching of Science [...]

Mary Hanafin has announced that new fee-paying schools will get no assistance from the government. The Indo seems to have an exclusive with this one; the Minister was reportedly answering a query from Ruairi Quinn, as if to remind Labour that Fianna Fail can be as lefty as anyone, thank you very much indeed. Existing [...]

So the “fallout” from the Math’s results continues. With both Fine Gael and Labour coming out with statements blaming the government and that they will bring joined up thinking to the problem etc etc. Problem both Labour and Fine Gael miss one of the biggest problems with Math and indeed Labour miss it in the [...]

With today’s results showing that the results for Higher Level Maths are down. Everyone is talking about how this is bad and how incentives should be given for people to do math etc. The simple fact of the matter is that Math is hard. You can learn off by rote History, English pretty much every [...]

Despite the news of Jobs going in Xerox.  There is still growth in the jobs market in Ireland in the high skilled end of the jobs market. From RTE.
professional, associate-professional and managerial occupations will grow by 20% over the next five years as compared to the figures up to 2005. Women are expected to make up a majority [...]

The head of TCD floated the idea of bring back third level fees yesterday.
The Government should first decide what sums were needed to make all of them internationally competitive, and then decide how much it was prepared to pay and “how much should be contributed by those with most to gain - the students.
Now Britain [...]

Earlier this evening, Questions and Answers flirted briefly with the issue of the Irish language, following the leaking of a report which predicted the end of Irish as the Gaeltacht’s lingua fraca within twenty years. Eamon Ó Cuív was asked whether he was embarrassed that only 46% of students in Gaeltacht schools can speak the [...]

Also known as Saturday’s Irish Times. The story most politicians and backroomers will chew over this morning is the dramatic figures which suggest nearly 3/4 of the electorate will not pay more tax in order to fund services. The data prior to this from Red C polls in the Business Post had the figure at [...]

Well it seems that since Bertiegate spilled over into Saturday, the bank holiday was extended to Tuesday to give a bit of breathing space. Still the FF machine are taking advantage of the pause by getting a policy out which migh be discussed. This policy relates to the creation of jobs and the primacy of [...]