Two major reasons students leave school early are the narrowness of the curriculum and poor relationships with teachers, a conference organised by the Conference of Religious in Ireland (CORI) has been told.
The group has called for the setting up of a forum for early school-leavers, who because they leave without a qualification are increasingly marginalised.
In a conference paper, the director of CORI's education office, Sister Teresa McCormack, said that many of the students had positive relationships with adults, but not necessarily teachers.
She said that steps could be taken at school level to improve the quality of teacher-student relationships and to create a more caring and supportive climate. "With training and other forms of support, we believe that teachers can be helped to overcome the problems which seem to arise in their relationship with disadvantaged young people."
In terms of the curriculum, she said, one major failure was to ignore political and social studies and religious education, which could develop students' capacities for "critical reflection".
The Leaving Certificate Applied and Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme had brought important innovations into education. The Department of Education and Science should seek to incorporate these into the normal Leaving Certificate programme.
Ms Aileen Walsh, a teacher who has published research in the area at the University of Limerick, said that 5,500 to 6,000 students left schools each year prior to obtaining a qualification.
Teachers needed to "reflect upon how they pace their teaching within the classroom", because early school-leavers indicated in research their experiences of being "left behind, embarrassed, not helped within the classroom".