Teaching Matters: Breda O'Brien assesses the challenge posed by the requirement to provide all children with a minimum level of education.

No doubt Minister for Education Mary Hanafin is still beaming after the successful teachers' conferences, but she is too smart not to know that she has some major challenges ahead. Take the fact that the State is now committed, both in the Constitution and in statute law, to ensuring that children receive a minimum education, either by regular school attendance or by approved home schooling.

The Education Welfare Act, 2000, which came into operation on July 5th, 2002, was prompted by some pressing concerns. For example, some 1,000 children are not transferring from primary to secondary school every year. The problem is particularly acute in the case of Travellers and other ethnic minorities. Some 2,400 children a year leave before the Junior Cert.

In addition, 30 per cent of children leaving primary school have literacy difficulties, often connected to poor attendance. These figures are a reproach to any wealthy society.

The Education Welfare Act requires parents to ensure their children attend school from six years of age until they reach 16 or complete three years post-primary education, which ever is later, or to provide reasonable alternatives. The aim is to ensure that children do not fall through the cracks of a system, with potentially disastrous consequences.

The Children First national guidelines state that consistent absence from school may be an indication of child neglect. Non-national children, particularly children who have come to this country as unaccompanied minors, can disappear and be involved in anything from exploitative work to far more sinister scenarios, including prostitution.

Educational attainment has a profound influence on the lifelong opportunities of a young person. Those children who are experiencing difficulties, whether because of family breakdown, learning disabilities or other special needs, are the ones least well-served by the current educational system.

A veritable arsenal of strategies and support is needed for these children, and that support just does not exist at anything remotely approaching the level required. It is only a matter of time before cases are taken to vindicate the rights of children to receive specialised help in mainstream schools. The State will be a sitting duck because of the Education Welfare Act, and rightly so.

The National Education Welfare Board (NEWB) is charged with implementing the Act. It must also act as an advocate or support for a child, parent or guardian if there is a difficulty with school attendance or educational welfare.

The NEWB role is frankly impossible without massive additional resources. It seems clear that neither the financial nor administrative implications of the Education Welfare Act were thought through properly. For example, the relevant education welfare officer must be informed in writing if a student is absent for 20 or more days in a school year.

According to the NEWB pre-Budget submission, one in 10 students is absent for 20 days or more at primary level, or approximately 47,000 students: almost one in five students is absent for 20 days at post-primary level, or approximately 37,000 students aged under 16.

Many of these absences by no means indicate child neglect. School principals and staff are usually astute judges of when intervention is required, but much of their time will from now on be taken up with record-keeping and paperwork for all students, even those patently not at risk.

The school has to categorise each and every absence under one of seven headings. Once a child reaches 20 absences, or even before if the principal is concerned, the NEWB requires the submission of a detailed form in relation to each such child.

It is an administrative nightmare. The official registers provided by the Department of Education provide space for registering only presence or absence. Nor does the Department have any plans to issue more detailed registers, much less resources for keeping such registers.

To give some idea of the record-keeping required, at primary, each child misses an average of 11 days, while at post-primary, the figure is 15 days.

There is another major issue, which is that schools are required to maintain children on their registers, recording them as absent until they receive a letter from a principal who has enrolled them elsewhere.

In the case of Travellers and non-nationals, often no such letter will ever be forthcoming. This means that a principal cannot offer a place, perhaps a highly-sought-after place, to another child. This is madness, and falsifies attendance figures.

The NEWB is grossly underfunded. Before the Budget, it employed 73 staff, and requested funding for 95 more. It got 10. Each educational welfare officer has approximately 200 urgent cases on hand. It is simply not possible for a human being to function with this level of overload.

Far worse than the administrative difficulties is that, as usual, it is the most vulnerable who will suffer most if the NEWB cannot function properly.

Not to mention the catch-22 that the enormous financial demands of implementing this Act may cause less funds to be available for educational disadvantage schemes, the very schemes which make it easier to retain children in school.

Breda O'Brien is a teacher at Muckross Park College, Donnybrook, Dublin and an Irish Times columnist.