Forcing parents by law to make their children attend school makes little difference to attendance rates, a report on truancy has concluded.
The report, No School, No Future, by Mr Eoin O'Sullivan and Mr Robbie Gilligan of Trinity College Dublin, was commissioned - and launched yesterday - by the National Youth Federation.
The authors argue for a "multidimensional view" of a complex problem, saying it is wrong to blame the child and family without taking into account wider societal and communal causes, and factors inside the school.
"While we would accept the need for an overhaul of the legal framework in this area, we would oppose a policy approach which relies heavily or exclusively on legal sanctions," they say. The Department is preparing new school attendance legislation.
The report urges the "value of the carrot rather than the stick. Progress will lie in the use of creative approaches involving close alliances between various combinations of young people, teachers, schools, support services and communities."
Among the models it singles out for favourable mention is the Horizon Programme in Cox's Demesne in Dundalk. Here all but one of 12 young people with serious educational and family problems have been integrated into work, education or training programmes.
The authors stress the "utter paucity of information on non-attendance at school". No comprehensive statistics have been gathered by the Department since 1971.
The National Youth Federation's chief executive, Mr Tony Murphy, warned against measures which "appear to penalise the pupil rather than dealing with the root causes. The danger is that a continuation of this practice could eventually lead to the adoption of further extreme measures, as proposed recently in Britain".