Action by British lecturers affecting students in Ireland

Thousands of students in Ireland applying for college in Britain face a delay in finding out if they will get a third-level place because of industrial action by university lecturers.

A total of 6,536 Leaving Certificate students in the Republic and 14,782 A-level students in the North applied for college places through the University and College Admissions Service (UCAS), the British equivalent of the Central Applications Office (CAO).

The affected students are borderline applicants, those who did not get the required grades for their first preference course at university and are awaiting the second or clearing round of places.

Britain's older universities are affected as lecturers, members of the Association of University Teachers, refused to handle college admissions yesterday or today, as part of industrial action for a 10 per cent pay rise.

UCAS deals with 257 colleges, of which about one-third are affected. The UCAS chief executive, Mr Tony Higgins, said yesterday that the action appeared to be having a minimal effect. He said that many of the colleges were working normally and "so we are advising students to go ahead and call them if they need to because there will almost certainly be someone there to help".

A UCAS spokeswoman said that there might be a delay for some students to find out if they were accepted but it would not affect their chances of getting placed.

Students who got the required grades for their first choice did not need to do anything except wait for the letter of acceptance. Borderline students were advised to phone the college of their choice, and if they did not get a reply, they should try again tomorrow when many of the colleges would be open, the spokeswoman said.

Thousands of students have bypassed the phones by contacting the universities through the Internet. The UCAS website showing the second round of available course had received 43,000 hits by mid-afternoon yesterday. The site opened at midnight on Wednesday and in the first hour had almost 4,000 hits.

Most students will have already been allocated a place, provided they get the grades they expect. Some 202,513 students have had their college places confirmed while a further 90,241 have either not got their first choice grades or have made late applications and go into the "clearing" system. In this, the second round of offers, there are at least 50,000 places available, more than the about 35,000 places in the entire Republic's system of CAO entries. The UCAS website address is www.ucas.ac.uk or www.ucas.co.uk and it has its own helpline for students at (0044) 1242 227788.