Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

My question relates not so much to schools as to other bodies set up by the Department of Education and Science, for example, bodies such as the National Educational Welfare Board to which the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, referred in his reply to Deputy Gogarty. The Minister of State said that board meets its obligations. What I am curious about is how he judges it meets its obligations. We do not know there is an improvement in school completion rates or in the number of students making the transition from primary to post-primary level. How do we evaluate that?

We could also look at the example of the school completion programme which has one national co-ordinator, four assistants and 65 cluster co-ordinators. Separate advertisements are issued for all of these at a cost of €3,000 each. The Department still makes the major decisions on the programme and there is an automatic increase in funding each year. Are we actually getting more students to complete school each year?

I support Youthreach and am glad to see more funding allocated to it. However, it is still at pilot stage and we have not evaluated whether it should be extended or more could be achieved through it. I would like to see more evaluation done on these types of initiatives. How do the Minister and her officials evaluate such bodies?

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