Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 20 May 2003

Vol. 567 No. 1

Written Answers. - School Completion Programme.

Dan Boyle

Ceist:

268 Mr. Boyle asked the Minister for Education and Science if he will give details of current expenditure for this year, both nationally and with each participating school, for the school completion programme, contrasting this with the last available combined expenditure for the early school leaving initiative and the stay in school retention initiative on the same basis. [13838/03]

Minister for Education and Science (Mr. N. Dempsey)

In 2002, my Department introduced the school completion programme – SCP, which 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 assimilates the eight to 15 early school leaver initiative – ESLI – and stay in school retention initiative – SSRI.

Some 17 ESLI projects were funded by the Department and these were located in 14 areas both urban and rural and covered both primary and second-level schools. The level of funding for each project site ranged from €80,000 to €279,000 per annum. Schools were selected to participate in the stay in school retention initiative based on the Department's records of school retention rates. Some 118 schools participated during the academic year 2001-02. The level of funding for each school was €50,790 in respect of a full year's involvement in the initiative. The total expenditure on the SSRI and the ESLI schemes in 2002 was €14.246 million.

Additional funding was made available under the National Development Plan 2000-2006 with assistance from the ESF fund for an expansion of these initiatives. Some €23.019 million has been allocated to the school completion programme in 2003. Some 82 project sites involving 109 post-primary schools and 295 primary schools were selected to participate in the project strand of the school completion programme. Annual allocation of funding for these sites range from €72,000 to €362,000.

In addition to the 82 projects, my Department continues to support 53 second level schools under the stay in school retention strand of this programme, as they were not selected for the project strand. It was decided to fund these schools on a phasing out basis to 2005, as my Department's policy to expand the programme is based on the project model rather than funding individual schools. These schools received €50,790 in the school year 2002-03 and will receive 50% of this allocation in 2003-04, reducing to 25% of this allocation in 2004-05.

My Department is currently reviewing the position in relation to SSRI schools and the schools concerned will be informed of the outcome shortly.