Ms Maria Tobin:

The home school community liaison teachers might take the final question - we were chatting about it earlier - but I am happy to address the question about outcomes and their measurement. Through our CPD programme we deliver training in logic modelling to home schools. We are working very hard at present to develop a culture of being outcomes-focused - in other words, looking at the desired outcome around attendance, participation and retention and then working backwards, looking at the initiatives we can use to improve these outcomes for children. As one home school co-ordinator said in one of our CPD sessions once: "I work with parents but my job is not to fill the school with parents, but with children." While the home school community liaison programme focuses on the adults in the child's life, our CPD programme is all about improving educational outcomes for children. The logic model looks at those educational outcomes and the initiatives that would best serve those outcomes in the short, medium and long term. The process is reviewed, a baseline is taken and, at the end of a term, the question is asked whether this initiative improved outcomes. For example, did more of the marginalised parents attend the parent-teacher meeting? If so, this is something we can do again and build on. If not, we need to look at another initiative and another way of reaching those families. That is very much on the top of our agenda at present. While it is very helpful to do the soft courses of cookery, sewing and so on, as well as the literacy and numeracy programmes, we need to ensure that these are achieving the desired outcome, which is to keep the child in school.