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Collaboration NOT Relocation for St. Angela’s Sligo - Harkin

A collaborative approach between St. Angela’s College and National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) utilising the education infrastructure and expertise in place in St. Angela’s and forging stronger links between the two colleges could provide a cost effective high quality outcome for the future training of home Economics teachers in Ireland.

This was stated by MEP Marian Harkin following a meeting with representatives from St. Angela’s College, to discuss the Report of the International Review Panel on the Structure of Initial Education Provision in Ireland.

She said:  “I have read through the Report and the overall approach is a positive one concentrating on quality of training and on good academic research.  However it fails on one key point in that it does not in the case of St. Angela’s adhere to Ireland’s National Strategy on Higher Education which ‘sees local, regional and international collaboration as a key to higher education systems development’.  In the case of St. Angela’s the proposal does not envisage regional collaboration, it simply proposes that the provision for teacher education currently offered at St. Angela’s should move to the NUIG campus and be fully integrated there.

“It is extremely disappointing that the only firm proposal for relocation involves St. Angela’s.  Other collaborations between colleges in Dublin for example acknowledge that there would be centrally accessible programme components as well as separate college based faculties where appropriate.

“In the case of Limerick the Report says that the integration will require negotiations with regard to locations or re-location of programmes, students and personnel.   In other words there is flexibility and a recognition of further collaboration in these proposals but not in the proposal for St. Angela’s.  Yet this is exactly what is needed for Sligo and Galway who already collaborate to a very significant extent.

“It is also very important to recognise that St. Angela’s, with 60 years experience of delivering  highest quality home economics teacher education, is the only centre of excellence for teaching and research in home economics in Ireland.  The College enjoys an extremely positive international reputation and has on its campus state of the art, specialist facilities specifically designed to optimise teacher training opportunities.  Any move to Galway would require significant capital expenditure on the Galway campus, and at a time when we need to invest every cent wisely it makes good economic sense to continue home Economics teacher training in St. Angela’s and strengthen further collaboration with NUIG.

It is simply beyond belief that once again we are facing the situation whereby all teacher training provision will only be accessible south of a line from Dublin to Galway further enhancing the concentration of resources in one part of the country and discriminating unacceptably against the North West region”, Marian Harkin MEP concluded.

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