Harris plans to ‘overhaul’ CAO system next year

Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris said the CAO form is too narrow.

The Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris said he intends to “overhaul” the CAO application form next year.

Speaking on Spin 1038′s Spin Ar Scoil this morning, he said the CAO form is “not the only way of getting to where you want to get to in life”. 

“Next year I plan on overhauling the CAO form because I think it narrows the conversation way way too much,” he said.

“Apprenticeships, further education... there are so many ways to getting to where you want to go.” 

The minister also said the Covid-19 pandemic had taught him it was possible “not to have a Leaving Cert (exam) and for the sky not to fall in.” 

“I don’t want to be flippant about it, the Leaving Cert is long and tested and there are good points... but we should be willing to open our minds to actually have a discussion about how we can do better by students,” he said.

This year’s sixth year students have a choice between sitting physical Leaving Certificate exams or receiving calculated grades, based on an assessment process. This includes in-class assessments, end of topic tests, aural and oral assessments, presentations, project work and course work over the last two years.

Students can opt for both the exams and accredited grades, and will automatically receive the better grade in each of their subjects.

The minister said he is expecting there will be an “increase in points” this year due to the fact students have more choice in how they are assessed.

Every year, about half of students who apply to the CAO get their first choice and around 80% of students get one of their top 3 choices.

“We have funding to increase the number of college places by just over 4,000."

"We’ve also now set up a group in the department, which is due to report back to me by Easter, to see what more we can do beyond that.” 

“I do want students to know 4,130 extra college places are in place this year.” 

Student accommodation 

The minister also said he doesn’t believe “nearly enough” has been done on student accommodation.

“We saw the difficulties this year with Covid where so many students were reliant on private developers.” 

“It just doesn’t feel right to me that a student would nearly be competing with maybe a family for a limited number of houses in a city or a large town.” 

Minister Harris said he has asked his officials to come back to him before the summer with proposals on “how we could do more on student accommodation.” 

“Long story short, it means I want to see us build more college-owned student accommodation,” he said.

“One of my priorities is to try and get the government and the state to build more state-owned or campus-owned student accommodation," he said, however he acknowledged this would not be complete in time for September.