THE HIGH number of pupils dropping out of school before their Leaving Cert will cost the State more than €100 million per year, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) said yesterday.
Latest figures show that about 20 per cent of students drop out before the exam. In the Dublin area, almost 30 per cent of students drop out.
The TUI estimates that about half of the 10,000 students who drop out of school each year will be dependent on the State at a cost of at least €20,000 per year in social welfare payments.
The TUI has also warned that student drop-out will increase due to a number of education cuts which target disadvantaged groups.
TUI general secretary Peter MacMenamin said: “As Government do not seem moved by the human cost of education cutbacks, we have costed student drop-out to the State in financial terms and the results are quite shocking. It makes it crystal clear that education cutbacks, particularly those that affect the most disadvantaged in society, will have severe economic and social consequences.”
The TUI believes the following measures should be implemented urgently:
Restoration of funding to programmes that prevent student drop-out by providing innovative learning methodologies, such as the Junior Certificate Schools Programme, the Leaving Certificate Applied and the Leaving Certificate Vocational;
A concerted effort to bring disenfranchised, unemployed young people back into the education system as “second chance” students. Vocational Education Committees (VECs) are ideally placed to meet this challenge;
The continuation of the ESRI School Leavers’ Survey (SLS), which was axed earlier this year. Its absence will leave an information deficit on school leavers. Mr MacMenamin said there is now considerably less demand for the type of low-paid manual labour which young people may have secured as early school leavers in the past. Working in the black market economy and involvement in crime are all too often pitfalls for such young people.
At a time when we are looking to develop a knowledge-based economy, there will be ever fewer chances for unskilled workers or those who have not completed second-level education in the coming years, he said.
