Emmet Stagg
Question:6 Mr. Stagg asked the Minister for Education and Science the plans, if any, he has in relation to the school attendance service; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15614/99]
Ceisteanna–Questions. Priority Questions. - School Attendance Service.
My comprehensive proposals in relation to the school attendance service are contained in the Education (Welfare) Bill, 1999, which will replace existing school attendance legislation. The overall objective of the Bill is to refocus resources and operations away from school attendance in the mechanical sense of days out of school and prosecution of parents and towards the general welfare, in an education sense, of children and the provision of support for them, their families and their schools.
This legislation provides for a comprehensive restructuring of current services relating to school attendance. The Bill includes provision to increase the minimum school leaving age from 15 to 16 years and to establish a new national educational welfare board to co-ordinate and implement services for children who display problems in their interaction with the education system. The board will have responsibility for implementing the Bill when enacted and for ensuring that its objectives are met on a national basis.
Consultations are continuing with interested parties on the provisions of the Bill, including representatives of the existing school attendance service. The Bill has completed its passage through the Seanad and will be debated in this House after the summer recess. I look forward to hearing the views of Deputies and it is my hope that the Bill can be enacted and implemented without delay.
Key provisions of the Education (Welfare) Bill are designed to ensure the early identification of children who have experienced or are likely to experience school attendance problems and the provision of assistance to these children and their families. The Bill also provides for the rights of parents to educate their children outside the recognised school system while ensuring that the rights of children to receive at least a minimum education are protected.
Will the Minister be more specific about the new service proposed in the Bill? When does he foresee the service will be up and running, and what are the financial implications of providing that nationwide service?
I would like to have the Bill enacted in the autumn. As the Deputy knows, there is a school attendance service in only four boroughs – Dublin city, Cork, Waterford and Dún Laoghaire. We have to set up the national educational welfare board which will take responsibility for those services. That can be up and running soon after the passing of the Bill. We intend to set up an establishment group prior to completion of the Bill to get the process ready in terms of establishing the service. We will then secure additional resources to extend the service thereafter. We do not yet have exact figures because the emphasis initially will be in areas of disadvantage. We will extend the educational welfare service to areas where there is acute educational and socio-economic disadvantage. It is not a question of a set number for every area, we will examine the priority of needs as they emerge.
Is the Minister satisfied that this board, which presumably will be based in Cork or Dublin—
Alas, it will probably be in Dublin.
Will he agree there is a risk that school attendance, which is essentially built around integrated services supporting a child in the community, cannot be well developed by a body which will have a national headquarters and which will see itself as similar to the Department in terms of being far removed from the individual community settings where these issues have to be developed? Should we not have a more devolved approach to educational welfare? Does the Minister envisage such a structure evolving?
It is important that we have a national educational welfare board. We have given much thought to this because it is important that we have a national fix in terms of the school attendance issue and that we have a national body which can drive research into the issues that lead to school attendance difficulties in children and which has access to international research. In addition to that, we envisage that the educational welfare officers will be based in the regions in areas where there are clusters of schools and that there will be devolved delivery of the educational welfare service on the ground because the Bill also places statutory obligations on other agencies to liaise with the educational welfare board through the educational welfare officers on the ground. The main activity will be on the ground in the various localities but I see merit in the structures we have developed. We are a small country and we need a centre which can co-ordinate best models of practice etc.
What are the Minister's views on the approach the board should take in relation to non-attendance? The Minister supplied me with figures yesterday on children serving custodial sentences. Does he agree it is simply not acceptable that children are serving two and three year sentences for non-school attendance? What approach would the Minister like to see the service taking other than pursuing the custodial sentence approach?
Pursuing the custodial sentence approach would be the last resort under the new legislation. That legislation is much more welfare orientated in terms of helping the child, not in terms of prosecuting people. The new Bill is about trying to establish the reason children are in difficulty in the first instance. The educational welfare officer will work to help the child achieve and participate in a programme of education. For too long children have been left out of school with nobody picking them up. That is an indictment on society over the past 30 or 40 years. I would like to think that the Bill is child focused. It places obligations on schools and parents to ensure that the needs of the child are given priority.