Ms Cliodhna O'Neill:

The Deputy heard the Minister in the education committee not so long ago discuss the Anseo initiative and broader attendance. I will speak briefly about that and then hand over to my colleague, Ms Bumster, about the reduced school days.

For the committee's benefit, the Minister announced a few months ago a significant focus on attendance across the board. We are conscious, as Ms Cullen said earlier, since the Covid-19 pandemic of the need to ensure attendance improves across our schools. That is universal. A whole swathe of initiatives has been put in place. The Deputy referenced the EWOs. It is worth noting the huge and considerable investment that has gone into additional educational welfare officers in recent years.

We have almost doubled the number of EWOs. I would have to check the exact figure. There has been a major focus on ensuring that children have school places and that attendance recovers from the level during the post-Covid phase. With regard to the new initiatives, in addition to providing the new EWOs, a national campaign on attendance across the board is being developed. We will be engaging specifically with the Traveller and Roma communities as part of that campaign and to ensure the materials being used are being disseminated and supported among those communities. There will be a very specific focus in that regard.

The Anseo initiative will be rolled out in a certain number of schools, the initial target being 60 schools. A large number of schools sought to be involved. We are considering how we can make the initiative available to more schools. It allows schools to examine their data, determine the patterns, get behind those and put in place effective strategies.

We also do other things in this space, including funding the partnership schools initiative with the National Parents Council, the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals and the Irish Primary Principals' Network to support schools to come up with strategies that involve parents and students so as to meet the target.

I could not agree more on referrals. If a child is approaching the 20-day threshold that requires reporting to TESS, it does not spark a referral, so it is really important that the school tackle the issue with the child, family and so on. It is only if such measures are not working that the option of referral to TESS is important. As the Deputy said, this is separate from a social worker referral.

Ms Bumster will talk about the reduced school day, which we also consider to be an incredibly important issue.