The school completion programme is a new and significantly expanded programme to deal with early school leaving incorporating the learning experience and best practice derived from previous early school leaving initiatives and will assimilate the existing eight to 15 early school leaver initiative, ESLI, and stay-in-school retention initiative at second level, SSRI.
The objective of the school completion programme is to provide a range of interventions in areas of disadvantage that support the retention of young people in education. It is based on an integrated approach involving primary and post-primary schools, parents, communities and relevant statutory and voluntary agencies.
Sites for participation were selected on the basis of a detailed analysis of pupil retention rates at second level using the Department's post-primary pupils database. This analysis also identified their main feeder primary schools. Having regard to the amount of funding available to this programme, 65 new project sites, in addition to the 17 existing ESLI projects have been selected to participate in the school completion programme. Fifty-three SSRI schools, which were not selected to participate in this strand, including the school referred to by the Deputy, will continue to be funded on a phasing out basis under an SSRI strand of this programme over the next three years.
Having regard to the amount of funding available to this programme in future, any decision to include further project sites will be based on the selection process using the most current detailed analysis of pupil retention rates at second level from the Department's post-primary pupils database.
