Ms Gráinne Cullen:

In terms of that third-year focus, the Traveller families would tell us we need to start earlier. Regarding whole-school guidance, there is an action in the strategy too to look at how guidance is working in our schools for the Traveller and Roma children, and also with transition year, including whether it is an attractive offering at transition year. I am working with colleagues who are working on the transition year aspect. We do this with the DEIS programme element too and what we call DEIS plus, which members are probably becoming more familiar with. It is concerned with very high-end disadvantage in a concentration of schools. There can be soft barriers there that we might not be getting underneath. Those things are worth mentioning too.

The Traveller and Roma families themselves and the communities would say that getting children to the leaving certificate is absolutely what we should be trying to do. Whether 16 is the statutory age or not, while they can move on to higher education through various pathways now, they will have a better chance if they sit the leaving certificate examinations. That is very much the concentration. We almost start in the upper end of primary school now in terms of looking at the guidance there. These are things we are exploring through the work we are doing.