Vol. 535 No. 2
83 Proinsias De Rossa asked the Minister for Education and Science his views on the role of the career guidance and counselling services in respect of their functions; and his intentions in relation to the future development of these services. [12322/01]
The recent audit of all second level schools, conducted on behalf of my Department by the National Centre for Guidance in Education, shows that a significant number of schools are not fully utilising the resources currently being made available to them by my Department for guidance. It also shows that in many schools the service is not adequately targeted at pupils at risk.
In these circumstances my first priority is to ensure that the resources made available to schools for guidance are fully utilised for that purpose. In line with the Government's priority to promote social inclusion, my other priority is to ensure that those young people who are most at risk of dropping out of education early are a major focus of guidance provision in schools. As a result, any future enhancement of provision to individual schools will be conditional on their making a commitment to providing a service to all their pupils which would reflect both Government priorities and their pupils' needs.
Recently I announced that 50 additional guidance posts are to be allocated to schools for use by them in developing innovative ways of enhancing their guidance provision, especially in promoting links between schools and business. Schools will shortly be invited to propose innovative actions they would undertake in order to enhance their guidance provision and that posts will be allocated on the basis of an objective assessment of these proposals.
