Matriculation requirement of three languages causes considerable annoyance
FIRST round offers for nursing diploma places will be made early next week, the Nursing Applications Centre told Points Race yesterday.
This is good news for Leaving Cert students who have applied for both CAO/CAS college places and a nursing place. With both offers coming at more or less the same time next week, students know exactly where they stand in making decisions on which to accept.
There will be 515 places offered on the nursing diploma courses, for which over 3,000 applied. Two rounds of interviews have already taken place and offers will be made on the basis of performance in the final interviews.
If all places are not filled from the first round of offers, second and subsequent offers will be made as happens in the CAO system.
Most of the principal training hospitals are now operating the new system - 13 of them in all. Most of the universities and two RTCs - Waterford and Letterkenny - are involved.
The students spend 58 weeks in university or RTC during their training and 86 weeks in hospital. They are not part of the hospital ward staff, as in the past, but they do get practical experience on the wards. This is in accordance with EU regulations.
As they are no longer hospital staff they are not paid a salary. But all get a maintenance grant of £500 - not meanstested, paid by the health board or, in the case of voluntary hospitals, the hospital.
Unlike conventional college courses, the nursing courses do not allow long summer holidays, so students work right through the calendar year, which would justify the higher grant level.
If they successfully complete the three years, a diploma in nursing studies is awarded by the relevant university or RTC. The students are then fully-qualified registered nurses and can opt to get a degree in nursing by studying one more year full-time at college.
The only general hospitals not now operating the new university/RTC-based nurse training are: the Mater and James Connolly Memorial hospitals in Dublin; Our of Lady of Lourdes in Drogheda and University Hospital in Cork.
. ENTRY REQUIREMENTS:
STUDENTS and schools are very pleased with the operation of the Nursing Applications Centre, which greatly simplifies the procedures for applying for a nurse-training place. However, there is still considerable annoyance over the imposing of National University of Ireland (NUI) matriculation requirements.
Points Race got many calls from students, parents and annoyed guidance counsellors after the issue was raised in this column yesterday.
The NUI matriculation regulations have always been a problem for schools, requiring as they do that students sit three languages in the Leaving Cert - Irish, English and another. As only six subjects count for points, this means that languages account for half the subjects of students seeking an NUI college place.
None of the other universities have such a requirement - Trinity and UL, for example, look for two languages, DCU just one; the RTCs and DIT also require just one language for basic entry.
Many schools would have hoped that, far from extending this dominance of languages farther, the NUI might eventually adjust its requirements.
The problem is twofold: (1) students whose strength lies more in the scientific direction are put at a disadvantage and (2) other school subjects decline in popularity as students' freedom of choice is severely limited.
What the schools cannot understand is why UL and DCU, for example, have allowed NUI matriculation requirements to be imposed on their students; similarly, they are asking why RTCs, whose very strength is supposed to lie in practical training, have put themselves in a situation where they require their nursing students to have three languages.
One guidance counsellor pointed out to this column yesterday that there is a precedent for not applying the three languages rule in non-NUI colleges.
St Pat's College of Education which trains national school teachers, used to have its degrees awarded by the NUI. During that period, students had to meet the three-languages requirement.
However, when St Pat's changed to having its degrees awarded by DCU, the three-language requirement was dropped and DCU matriculation requirements substituted. Why can the same not apply to nursing?
The objections here are not to the Irish language, incidentally - Bord Altranais requires that in any case. It is to the requirement of a Leaving Cert pass in a language.
The North Eastern branch of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors, whose representative was quoted in this column yesterday, is worried that other school subjects will suffer. "We fear that it will push out other subjects such as history, geography and practical subjects," says branch spokesman Seamus McDermott.
He feels that at age 15 or 16, when making Leaving Cert subject choices, thousands of students want to keeping the nursing option open. "It is a very popular career."
So they will drop other subjects in favour of a continental language even if they ar«MDBO»e «MDNM»weak at languages. He feels that students may even find themselves having to drop a second science subject (surely relevant to nursing?) to accommodate the third-language requirement.
Interestingly, in the outline of new university legislation published recently by the Minister for Education, one of the few specific powers left to the NUI (as its colleges become more independent) is the setting of matriculation requirements for these colleges.
Surely, as UCD, UCC, UCG and Maynooth acquire greater independence under this legislation, the time has come to allow each of them to set their own matriculation requirements as well?
Yesterday, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health told Points Race that the NUI matriculation requirements were applied in the case of the initial pilot nursing diploma course which was based on UCG; when the UCG model was extended to other colleges, the NUI matriculation requirements were simply transferred with it.
Presumably, it is not too late to undo this and allow for each college to apply its own matriculation regulations. All nursing students have to meet the Bord Altranais requirements in any case. Surely, that takes care of the matter of national standards?