Educational reform - Why does it take so long Minister?

WHEN he was education minister Noel Dempsey announced plans to review the entry requirements needed to study medicine in one of our five undergraduate medical schools.

A taskforce set up by his department at that time, in 2003, recommended that any student who achieved 450 points in their Leaving Cert should be offered a separate opportunity to establish their suitability or otherwise to study medicine. Through this process aspiring professionals might earn enough credits to get a place.

This is an entirely commendable idea. One that offers an opportunity to suitable candidates to realise their ambitions and one that reduces the overemphasis on academic results of the most demanding kind.

The announcement by the incumbent minister Mary Hanafin — reported by the Irish Examiner earlier this summer — that she intends to establish a very similar scheme by 2009 is welcome.

Sadly, that welcome is diminished by the dreadfully slow pace of reform; effectively the deferred provision of opportunity.

That it will have taken at least six years to introduce this moderate reform — let’s be wildly optimistic and assume the deadlines will be met — is unacceptable.

Just as last week’s suspension of breast cancer screening services is a consequence of reform delivered with considerably less verve than that brought to Croke Park by Kilkenny on Sunday, the pace of delivery of educational reform is far, far too slow.

Putting aside the tardiness for a moment, Ms Hanafin’s proposals, which she hopes to extend to pharmacy, dentistry and veterinary, will open the door for many hundreds of people who might otherwise have been lost to the system. Many of these people will have qualities as important to the provision of healthcare as the dazzling academic record now required.

Inevitably there are opponents to this modest proposal. The universities’ academic councils have been less than enthusiastic about a development that has the potential to dilute the power they have to set entry requirements for college courses.

Ms Hanafin should be encouraged to bring about these changes even if it means prising power from the clutches of those who wish to preserve the status quo. After all, anyone lucky enough to get a place through these initiatives will have to pass final exams before graduation. At that point they will have reached the end of a long process littered with far too many stumbling blocks and barriers, not all of them academic.

That these barriers are too often used to insulate privilege from the intrusions of equity and real social justice is all the more reason to support the minister’s proposals... if only she could be quick about it.