Mr. Pat Bergin:

To set the scene, the provision of education is on site through the Department of Education and Skills and is delivered locally by the ETB. Outside of the staff complement, there are approximately 28 teachers who provide education. The school has been designed and built to accommodate up to 80 young people and the ratio of young people to teachers is approximately 3:1. The school is based around the primary school year and runs until the end of June even though second-level classes and subjects are taught.

With regard to the campus, it is expected that all the young people attend school and they want to and are eager to attend school. Generally, the young people would divide the subjects into two categories. They would talk about the practical subjects such as metalwork and woodwork, which they all want to attend. Then there are the more academic subjects such as English and Irish. The school has a regime, which is that they do both. That is the deal between the young people and the principal and teachers, and it works well.

The school day kicks off around 9.45 a.m. and finishes at 3.20 p.m. The class times are longer now. They used to be 40 minutes. However, due to the challenge of moving young people between classes, they are now one hour long. The school structures that by reference to the subjects and the mix of young people and their inclination. If memory serves me correctly, in 2017 ten young people sat junior certificate exams. In 2016, 17 young people sat junior certificate exams. In 2016, 83 or 84 young people did QQI education modules and I believe that so far 53 young people have done them in 2017. These modules are components of junior certificate exams which they will be in a position to use when they move on to other educational facilities. If they go to school out in the community, they will be able to build up the capacity and say they have done certain exams or got certain accreditation.

Art, reading and writing is important to many of the young people and making stuff for their families is important to them. They want to spend as much time as they can in school. We are currently considering what the exact educational programme should be and the board has instigated a process to examine whether we need to have a better understanding of the educational needs of these young people rather than saying this is the model for young people to fit into.

There are two schools: one in the remand unit, which young people there attend, and one in the main campus, which the committal lads attend. That helps because it means people are getting more time in school. Dividing them, we can get people into school quickly and teachers can focus on the individual subjects. Young people on remand will engage with some subjects. Classroom numbers are even smaller again because of the way it is designed. Therefore, there might be two young people in a classroom with a teacher. In the main campus, it is usually three. The lads are quite anxious to and want to attend. When we consider the posters and all that is going on, we see that the lads are quite proud of what they do in the school. The principal and the vice-principal tailor a lot of what they do to individual young people's needs. They then work with us by identifying schools and options for young people who are moving on. When young people come in, they contact the schools the young people had attended. In our recent statistics, when we reviewed the figure in the first quarter of 2017, 45% or 46% of young people had not been attending school prior to their coming to us. There had been a big drop out. Therefore, to have young people come back into the school situation was quite a benefit and important for them.

I meet young people regularly and many speak about their options when they move on. More often than not, they want to do an apprenticeship, get a Safe Pass to work on a building site or go onto Youthreach. They want to continue what they started. That is the challenge and the school helps to support us in terms of ensuring those options are available.