More measures to tackle educational disadvantage should be introduced as a matter of urgency, Sr Claude Meagher, president of the Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools (ACS) told the organisation's annual convention in Galway last week.

"More than 90 per cent of the 3,000 young people who leave full-time education with no formal qualifications are from low-income backgrounds," she said. Some 75 per cent of families in poverty are headed by an adult who has no formal education.

While the £194 million allocated to tackling educational disadvantage under the Government's New Deal was welcome, much more needed to be done, she said. The Minister should establish the Committee on Educational Disadvantage as outlined in the Education Act and provide it with sufficient resources to enable it to develop policy and strategy.

Layers of bureaucracy should be removed so that schools could plan long-term programmes to replace the existing ad hoc arrangements.

Meagher also called on the Minister to provide opportunities to enable early school-leavers to return to education.

The support structures for second chance and community education set out in the White Paper on education should be implemented without delay, she said, and recommendations in the report of the Commission on the Points System relating to strategies for increasing the participation of young people and adults in third-level education should also be implemented.