Ms Mary Cregg:

Deputy Stanton will be aware of the previous engagement on reduced school days. The Department published guidelines in September which will come into effect in January. One of the issues with reduced school days was that there was no formal reporting mechanism. From 1 January, all schools will be required to notify the Tusla education support service when a reduced school day is put in place. We are aware of some situations in which a reduced school day can be a positive intervention, such as when a child has had a bereavement or might need to reintegrate into the school on a transitional basis for other reasons. We certainly wanted to balance making allowance for those sorts of situations with ensuring a reduced school day did not apply as a disciplinary measure or was not something that prevented a child from attending school. That has been a significant development. With regard to the Deputy's question on the gathering of data and to what extent they would have been in place, the data on the pilots will be gathered as part of a formal evaluation for which we will shortly be going out to tender.

NTRIS has strong links with homework clubs and while we would not necessarily want to be setting up homework clubs under the NTRIS pilot, we want to ensure that children have access to where necessary. In Dublin, the pilot has strong links with homework clubs that are supported by City of Dublin ETB such as the St. Margaret's homework club pilot. I know the committee has visited the St. Margaret's site as well. In Wexford, students are directly accessing homework clubs in six of the schools. In Tuam, homework clubs are running in some of the schools and evening study and homework clubs in the secondary school. There are links with homework clubs and that has been seen as one of the initiatives in use for the pilot.

Youthreach is now under the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and I do not have the specific detail on that, but under the DEIS plan, schools in the DEIS programme will be specifically asked to focus on transitions and to look at linking in to those alternative pathways. However, the Department wants to encourage children staying within the mainstream system and being afforded the same opportunities at an equal level with other children across the system. Where that is not possible or where children are not in a position to continue in mainstream education, alternative pathways are available to them, Youthreach being one of them.