The absence of Institutes of Technology from a three-page Irish Times feature on where leaving certificate students are pursuing further education may have caused concern among Waterford readers.
But to give the Times its due, the Feeder School List which featured in last Thursday’s edition refers only to those students who have entered the university system and does not include those who enter the IT or PLC systems.
It also states that Trinity College Dublin does not release details of schools who supplied three or less students for “reasons of confidentiality”.
This paper is aware that city and county schools have supplied students who sat last year’s Leaving Certificate to TCD. However, the national paper’s clarification indicates that no single Waterford school supplied three or more candidates to Trinity.
Three days later, The Sunday Times ran its annual ‘Top 400 Secondary School’ list. Its data was based on the students gaining places in 2005/06 and 2006/07 to the island’s nine universities, along with the Royal College of Surgeons, the National College of Art and Design and the country’s major teacher training colleges.
And while it does include percentages on how many students from the schools listed progressed to third level, it again fails to specifically provide a breakdown of who progresses into the IT sector.
While Waterford Institute of Technology has pursued a significant overseas student recruitment policy in recent years, the vast majority of its student body remains indigenous to the region.
From the 2007 Leaving Cert, Waterford’s schools provided the following number of students to the following universities according to the Irish Times list:
University Students Largest single provider
UCD: 42 Yeats College – 14
TCD: 21 Newtown School – 10
DCU: 14 Yeats College – 4
UL: 72 De La Salle – 16
NUIM (Maynooth): 18 Yeats College – 10
NUIG: 10 Newtown School – 4
UCC: 226 Saint Augustine’s (Dungarvan)
and De La Salle (33 each)
Meanwhile, the following Waterford schools feature in the Sunday Times Top 400. Its overall position is included in brackets.
% at university % at 3rd level Place
Ard Scoil na nDeise, Dungarvan 57 77.1 (114)
St Angela’s Ursuline Convent 43.5 81.3 (197)
Newtown School 42.9 69.3 (203)
St Augustine’s, Dungarvan 40.9 68.7 (227)
Our Lady of Mercy, Ozanam Street 36.9 83.7 (280)
Scoil na mBraithire, Dungarvan 36.1 63.8 (294)
De La Salle College, Waterford 32.6 65.6 (343)
