About 16 per cent of the school population may be reasonably regarded as being affected by educational disadvantage, it is estimated. Depressingly, nearly 8,000 pupils left school immediately after the Junior Cert in 1994-95, the last year for which figures are available. Even more disturbing, in that year, some 2,700 children dropped out of second-level school without doing the Junior Cert.
Dublin has the highest concentration of educational disadvantage, where 18.1 per cent of all pupils in the city are affected - in terms of literacy, early-chool-leaving and poverty. In rural areas the proportion is 16.6 per cent.
The Combat Poverty Agency (CPA), which launched three discussion pieces on educational disadvantage and early school-leaving only last Thursday, insists that breaking the cycle of educational disadvantage must be a real national priority. An information pack on the agency's own programme for educational disavantage also has been launched.
That programme, which supports four networks, based in Drogheda, Co Louth; Killinarden, Co Dublin; Tralee, Co Kerry; and Tuam, Co Galway, was initiated by the CPA in 1996 and recognises the multidimensional nature of educational disadvantage, which arises because of the interaction of factors at home, in school and in the community including economic, social, cultural and educational factors. The programme, the CPA points out, also recognises the need for integrated responses at national and local levels.
The CPA says that, since many of the solutions to disadvantage have been identified, there is a need to increase the scale and intensity of the programmes to address the problem.
The new National Early School-Leaving Network (NESLN) also seeks to bring about change in the educational policies and structures which relate to early school-leaving. The network believes that the proven experience and expertise of grassroots initiatives could play a major role in influencing positive change in national policy on early school-leaving and young people at risk of dropping out of the system.
The most perplexing aspect of the problem of second-level drop-outs is that nobody actually knows the up-to-date position on how many pupils leave second-level before completing their education. Given that 2,700 left before Junior Cert four years ago - and this possibly has increased since then - isn't it imperative to find out what the situation is on an ongoing basis? In this day of instant communications, it's amazing that such statistics are not available. However well-intentioned the efforts of the Department of Education and Science and the voluntary agencies, without quantifying the size of the problem, it's going to be very difficult to know whether it is being properly addressed.
If such figures are not available, how do we know how many are falling through the safety net? And how many drop out between Junior and Leaving Cert? Are schools not required to make reports on drop-out levels each term? Since so many of the second-level drop-outs end up as people with poor job prospects and vulnerable to crime, why isn't this the first priority of the Minister and the Department?
