Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 13 Nov 2002

Vol. 557 No. 2

Adjournment Debate. - School Completion Programme.

Mr. Andrews

St. Laurence College in Loughlinstown is a secondary school. Loughlinstown is the subject of the CODAN scheme – County Dublin areas of need – the RAPID programme and the Southside Partnership. It is one of the more disadvantaged areas of Dublin and certainly one of the most disadvantaged areas of Dun Laoghaire. The area has been the focus of much social investment over the past few years and all of this is improving the situation there very significantly. St. Laurence College is a school in the Marianist tradition. It has a number of feeder primary schools in the area. The four local primary schools are also based in Loughlinstown and neighbouring Ballybrack. The other secondary school associated with the school completion programme is Cabinteely community school. These six schools, two secondary and four primary, have worked together over the past two years on the stay-in-school retention initiative. This was an important scheme which is bearing fruit in the key social aim of keeping children in disadvantaged areas in school for the longest possible time.

I was a secondary school teacher in Ballyfermot a few years ago and one of the things that was glaringly obvious was the failure of so many students to stay in school in the first place and the almost non-existent graduation to university attendance from such areas. This is also the case in St. Laurence College in Loughlinstown.

In 2001 St. Laurence College was informed that the school completion programme was to be introduced and that it was to be kept in the stay-in-school retention initiative until 2006. It now appears that St. Laurence College is to be left out of the school completion programme and that the only other competition for feeder schools in the area, Cabinteely community school, is to be retained. Cabinteely community school has been a very worthy and successful participant in the scheme up to now, but St. Laurence College should not be left out of it. There are three reasons for this. First, St. Laurence College receives 80% of its current student roll from those four feeder schools that I mentioned earlier. The Minister is aware of the consequences for St. Laurence College if it is no longer involved in a scheme with those four feeder schools. Second, there is a decreasing student roll in the four schools I mentioned which will have consequences for St. Laurence College, independent of its exclusion from the scheme. Finally, the school retention scheme has a budget of €250,000 whereas the stay-in-school retention initiative will be phased out by 2005 and will only involve funding in the region of about €10,000 over the next year or so. There is a clear inequality there, and there are clear reasons why St. Laurence College should be retained within the scheme.

The criteria for leaving out St. Laurence College have not been made clear at this point and they may well be nobly and well motivated. However, it is my impression that whoever made the decision was not fully aware of the facts on the ground and may not have been familiar with the local area. St. Laurence College is the only secondary school in Loughlinstown. The other school is in Cabinteely and also serves places such as Foxrock and Cornelscourt which are fairly wealthy areas. It is probably not appropriate that Cabinteely community school is the only school included in the school retention scheme.

This is an unusual case in that I am not asking the Minister to spend any more money and I am quite aware of the changed climate that exists at the moment. All I am looking for is a political decision to override a decision which I believe was not properly made.

Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science (Mr. B. Lenihan)

I am glad the Deputy has given me the opportunity to outline to this House the position regarding this matter.

The school completion programme, which is a new and expanded programme to deal with early school leaving, was introduced earlier this year. It incorporates the elements of best practice established by the eight to 15-year-old early school leaver initiative and the stay-in-school retention initiative at second level, the pilot phases of which came to an end in July and August last respectively.

SCP is designed to deal with issues of both concentrated and regionally dispersed disadvantage and is a key component of the Department of Education and Science strategy to discriminate positively in favour of children and young people who are at risk of early school leaving. Significant funding has been made available to this programme over the next three years –€23.1 million in 2003, €23.5 million in 2004 and €24.1 million in 2005 – under the national development plan with assistance from the European Social Fund. The school completion programme recognises that a wide variety of home, community and school-based factors can contribute to low school attainment and early school leaving. Improving student retention to completion of senior cycle at second level can be achieved only by enhancing the educational experience of those for whom school may be irrelevant or unimportant. Consequently, strategies designed to address the needs of young people at risk of early school leaving must include a range of actions that impinge on these aspects of young people's lives. These strategies must, therefore, be holistic and child-centred by nature. The school completion programme aims to develop local strategies to ensure maximum participation levels in the education process. It entails targeting individual young people of school going age, both in and out of school, and arranging supports to address inequalities in education access, participation and outcomes.

The programme will focus on the areas of greatest need. Sites for participation have been selected on the basis of a detailed analysis of pupil retention rates at second level, using the Department of Education and Science post-primary pupils database. This analysis also identified the main feeder primary schools. A total of 82 projects – 65 new projects sites, together with the existing 17 ESLI projects – have been selected to participate in the school completion programme.

A local management group must be established to manage each of the projects at local level. School completion projects must have representatives of relevant schools, parents, together with local statutory, voluntary and community agencies. This local management group will consult with the local home-school community liaison committee, where one exists, on a two-way advisory basis. Evidence generated from the pilot phases of the school completion programme shows that the most effective way to address educational disadvantage is through an integrated services approach. The local management group will therefore be required to assess the needs of marginalised, educationally disadvantaged young people at local level and to devise an integrated, costed, focused and targeted retention plan that will support these young people in their school, home and community life. Representatives of schools and agencies on the local management group must engage school staff and parents in a consultative and planning process so that the retention plan supports the needs of all young people at risk. The retention plan will offer in-school, after-school, out-of-school and holiday time supports to young people at risk.

A national co-ordinating team that comprises a national co-ordinator and four assistant national co-ordinators supports the school completion programme. It is the task of the national co-ordinating team to advise on and monitor the integrated area based retention plans that support the young person at risk at local level.

In addition to the 82 school completion projects, the Department of Education and Science is continuing to support 53 second level schools which were funded previously under the Stay in School retention initiative, but were not selected for the project phase on this occasion. These 53 schools, which include St. Laurence's College, Loughlinstown, will be supported under the Stay in School retention phase of the schools completion projects on a phasing out basis over the next three years to 31 August 2005.

With regard to the funding available to this programme in future, any decision to include further project sites will be based on a selection process using the most current detailed analysis of pupil retention rates at second level from the Department of Education and Science post primary pupils database.