Payment from the youth allocation is made for informal education youth purposes.
My Department is represented on the EU monitoring committee for the local urban and rural development programme and maintains an ongoing liaison with the Department of Tourism, Sport and Recreation. It does not have a funding role in relation to the access programmes within this relationship.
Most third level colleges have developed initiatives to promote disadvantaged access, through targeted funding provided to the universities by the Higher Education Authority and funding from within the overall financial allocations to the institutes of technology. These initiatives involve links with second-level schools and local communities and examples of these activities include supervised study programmes, summer schools, study skills programmes and mentoring. There are two aspects to these programmes, one involving assistance to students to meet the points requirements for courses, enabling them to obtain a third level place through the standard CAO entry procedure. The other aspect of the programmes is the special entry arrangements through which more flexible entry criteria are applied and various supports are put in place for students entering by this method.
Funding of £150,000 has been approved for the Dublin Northside Partnership in respect of its higher education support scheme, which enables students from disadvantaged families to proceed on to, and remain, in higher education, for the 1999-2000 and 2000-01 academic years. I am aware that other partnership companies operate similar further education support programmes and my officials are engaged in discussions with the Area Development Management Ltd. to explore how best to support initiatives being taken and indeed, to learn from the various experiences.
The report of the commission on the points system has made a number of recommendations in relation to disadvantaged students. The commission indicated the need to develop a national approach to ensuring that special access schemes encompass disadvantaged students who are attending non-designated as well as designated schools. This report is currently being considered by my officials and planning for an implementation strategy is under way.
