Hibernia hired to retrain bankers

The following article by Tom Lyons appeared in the Sunday Times on August 16th, 2009.

A programme developed by Hibernia College in Dublin is to be used by the British government to retrain finance and technology professionals as maths and science teachers, writes Tom Lyons.

iTeach which the college developed with Canterbury Christ Church University in England will be used at five universities initially.

The project is designed to address a shortage of maths, physics and chemistry teachers and the aim is to retrain 750 people.

The move is part of an expansion drive by Hibernia College which was efounded by Dr. Sean Rowland. He said: “Hibernia College is working with colleagues in North America, South America and South Africa to expand its educational offerings and form an increasing number of global partnerships.”

Hibernia, which employs 72 people and 320 contract teacher-training staff, has students in more than 30 countries.

“The World Bank has identified the need for several million teachers globally” said Rowland. “We have funded Irish volunteer teachers to share their expertise in Haiti and we are also engaging with educators in Madagascar”.

The college has been working in Britain for five years and Rowland said it also has plans to expand in Ireland.

ICT Ireland, a group that represents the Irish technology sector, said last week it was concerned about the standards of Leaving Cert maths, and Rowland plans to target the training of teachers in this area, and in science.

Hibernia also plans to offer a master of arts in teaching and learning for primary and secondary teachers.