Thomas P. Broughan
Question:124 Mr. Broughan asked the Minister for Education and Science if he will make a statement on the progress to date of the National Education Welfare Board. [19478/04]
View answerWednesday, 30 June 2004
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Written answers
The Education (Welfare) Act 2000 established the National Educational Welfare Board as the single national body with responsibility for school attendance. The Act provides a comprehensive framework promoting regular school attendance and tackling the problems of absenteeism and early school leaving. The general functions of the board are to ensure that each child attends a recognised school or otherwise receives a certain minimum education.
To discharge its responsibilities, the board is developing a nationwide service that is accessible to schools, parents/guardians and others concerned with the welfare of young people. For this purpose, educational welfare officers, EWOs, are being appointed and deployed throughout the country to provide a welfare-focused service to support regular school attendance and discharge the board's functions locally. The board has appointed a chief executive officer, directors of corporate services and educational welfare services and the necessary support and service delivery staff. The overall authorised staffing complement is 84, comprising 16 headquarters and support staff, five regional managers, 11 senior educational welfare officers and 52 educational welfare officers.
At this stage of its development, the aim of the board is to provide a service to the most disadvantaged areas, including areas designated under the Government's RAPID programme and most at-risk groups. Five regional teams have now been established with bases in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford and an educational welfare service is now available, for the first time, in the cities of Limerick, Galway and Kilkenny. Twelve towns with significant schoolgoing populations, 11 of which are designated under the Government's RAPID programme, also now have an educational welfare officer allocated to them. These towns are Dundalk, Drogheda, Navan, Athlone, Carlow, Wexford, Bray, Clonmel, Tralee, Ennis, Sligo and Letterkenny. In addition, the board will follow up on urgent cases nationally.
The board has also moved to provide a service to families who decide to have their children educated in places other than in recognised schools. A small number of people with the appropriate skills have been allocated to this work and assessments will commence shortly. My Department has recently issued guidelines to assist the board in meeting its responsibilities in this area. An information leaflet and an application form have issued to families who are educating their children at home. Work is also proceeding on the establishment of the register for 16 and 17 year olds who leave school to enter employment.
As provided for under section 10 of the Education (Welfare) Act 2000, I have arranged for officials of my Department to work with the board to ensure that any opportunities for integrated working between educational welfare officers and staff on other educational disadvantage programmes, whose work involves a school attendance element, are exploited to the maximum. I consider the implementation of protocols for such integrated working on attendance matters between the NEWB and, in particular, the home/school/community liaison scheme, the school completion programme and the visiting teacher service for Travellers to be most important. When in place, these will assist the NEWB in carrying out its remit and ensure that all available existing resources are utilised to the full.
The board has sought the first comprehensive data returns from schools regarding attendances and absences in the 2003–04 school year and these will assist it in keeping the level of need for the new service in particular areas under review.