Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 11 April 2024
Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community
Traveller Education Policy: Department of Education
Ms Cliodhna O'Neill:
If 100 Traveller students start in first year in 2015, we can see how many make it into junior cycle 1, 2, 3, etc. As regards the out-of-school provision that Ms Cullen was speaking about and that report, the focus in the report - not to give a spoiler alert - is that the Minister has asked the group to look at a number of different aspects. One of the key aspects is retention in schools. At one end of the scale, we have out-of-school provision, which is specific provision. Before you come to that, however, what are we doing to retain children in the schools? The school completion programme is one aspect of that but what other supports are available in schools, how do we ensure they are targeted at children who are most at risk of leaving, and how do we identify those children? For instance, we know from the 2015 cohort of Traveller children - this was given to me as rough stats - that if 100 started, about 90 of them made it to the third year of junior cycle. That is a significant improvement on previous years, but ten of them did not make it that far. Where did they go and what have we supported them with? Then, of the 90 who made it to junior cycle, how many sit the examination? It is a lower number again, and so on, as we go up through the system.