Education and opportunity - A pressing challenge

This morning 56,990 young adults get their Leaving Certificate results. For a minority — barely more than 11,000 — this rite of passage marks and end, for the moment at least, of their formal education. 

However, most, 45,700 students, have applied for places at third-level institutions. The great majority will be offered one though far fewer will, if recent trends are repeated, complete any third-level course.

The scale of social change this represents, say from these students’ grandparents schooldays where only a privileged minority could hope to get to college, cannot be overstated. This huge change has educational and social consequences as the ESRI pointed out this week.