Leaving Cert result delays leave Northern Ireland universities with empty places

Last week, Education Minister Norma Foley told the Oireachtas education committee that the best estimate for when this year’s results will be issued is early September. Picture: Mark Stedman/RollingNews.ie

The number of students here crossing the border to pursue their studies in Northern Ireland has steadily declined in recent years.

In 2020, students from the Republic of Ireland made up 3% of total enrolments at Northern Ireland’s higher education institutions, compared to 6% in 2011.

At the same time, the number of Northern Irish students studying in higher education institutions here has grown, albeit at a slow pace. 

Meanwhile, delays issuing Leaving Cert results in recent years have left universities in Northern Ireland with empty places they cannot fill.

Results are traditionally issued in August but have been delayed in recent years due to a number of factors.  Last week, Education Minister Norma Foley told the Oireachtas education committee that the best estimate for when this year’s results will be issued is early September.

The Oireachtas education committee on Tuesday heard there were a number of barriers to cross-border education enrolments. One barrier is the differing admission systems for higher education, according to Northern Ireland Department for the Economy deputy secretary Heather Cousins.

While Northern Ireland is aligned with the UK using the UCAS system for admissions, here the process is managed by the Central Application Office (CAO).

“This naturally leads to some misalignment in respect of timings of the admissions stages — an issue which was exacerbated in the past few years due to the impact of the pandemic and the delays this created in publishing results,” she said.

"Scotland's results come out a different day to Northern Ireland, England, Wales, but we still managed to accommodate that within the UCAS system," Ms Cousins said. 

In recent years, institutes in Northern Ireland have held places for students in the Republic who have not taken up those places, she added. Due to delays here and differences in the UCAS system, the universities subsequently were not able to fill those places.

Those places are therefore lost to them and that means they can't recruit up to their maximum student number, so it is quite a serious situation for the university.”

Figures from the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency show an overall decline in the total number of both full and part-time students from Ireland enrolled in higher education in Northern Ireland. Enrolments fell from 3,514 in 2011 to 2,095 in 2016.

However, this decline has somewhat “plateaued” in recent years, with the most recent figures available indicating that 2,170 students were enrolled in Northern Ireland in 2020.

At the same time, the number of students from Northern Ireland enrolling here increased yearly from 1,160 in 2016 to 1,625 in 2020.

While significant numbers of students from the Republic of Ireland enrol in further education courses in Northern Ireland, the flow of students from in the opposite direction is “disproportionate” in comparison. 

There has also been a “significant decline” in further education student numbers in the years following Brexit.