Pavee Point welcomes the new partnership between Mary Immaculate College, Tipperary ETB, and Limerick and Clare ETB, which will provide students with an opportunity to take a Further Education pathway into primary teaching. This follows a similar partnership between Trinity College Dublin and City of Dublin ETB in nursing, which launched in January. Both initiatives have been developed in close collaboration with the National Tertiary Office.
At the present moment only 26.5% of Travellers and 58.9% of Roma complete the Leaving Certificate, both of which fall remarkably short of the general population rate of 90%. Courses like these provide an alternative and flexible pathway into further and higher education for Travellers and Roma which will ultimately result in professional qualifications.
While Pavee Point remains committed to raising the completion and success rate of Travellers and Roma through the Leaving Certificate and traditional entry routes into higher education, we also welcome flexible and alternative routes into such courses as they are beneficial to meeting students where they are at, particularly those who may have already left the traditional school system. This reflects findings from the Traveller and Roma Community Needs Analysis by College Connect, which found that ‘alternative pathways acknowledges diverse learning journeys of all students.’ Read that report here.
We welcome MIC’s prioritisation and TCD’s reservation of places for Traveller and Roma applicants, and would encourage both institutions to work actively with Traveller and Roma organisations to support recruitment, retention and progression on these pathways.
We encourage Travellers and Roma with an interest in teaching or nursing to find out more about these pathways and to apply where the programme suits them. Applications to the Mary Immaculate College tertiary pathway in Primary Teaching open on 29 April 2026 and close on 28 May 2026, with the programme commencing in September 2026. Applications for these courses and a range of other courses which follow the further education to higher education route are now available and the full range can be found on the National Tertiary Office website at: https://nto.hea.ie/courses/.