Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for putting this matter on the agenda this evening. I am taking it on behalf of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Fitzgerald. I assure the Deputy that I will bring his comments directly to her attention.

The school completion programme aims to retain young people in the formal education system to completion of senior cycle and generally to improve school attendance, participation and retention of its target cohort. The programme operates under the remit of the National Educational Welfare Board which has responsibility for the operational management and national direction of the programme.

In 2013, funding of €26.456 million is being made available by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs to support the 124 school cluster projects and related initiatives within this national programme. This funding enables the 470 primary and 224 post-primary schools in the programme to support educational interventions for approximately 36,000 students. The majority of schools supported by the school completion programme receive this assistance as part of the school support programme under the DEIS initiative.

As in all areas of the public sector, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs had to find savings as part of the comprehensive review of expenditure. The Department must play its part in the collective Government effort to reduce our unsustainable day-to-day deficit. That is the reality for the Department of Children and Youth Affairs as well as others. The comprehensive review published in December 2011, set out clearly the 6.5% per annum savings required in the school completion programme in each of the years 2012 to 2014. The extent of the adjustment was signalled to the projects by the Department in late 2011. In these circumstances it has not been possible to ring-fence funding at historical levels but we did protect individual projects from the full budget adjustment in 2012.

In order to remain within the 2013 allocation, however, the local management committee responsible for each project was notified last September that a 6.5% reduction would be applied for the coming academic cycle, in this way the full year budget for each project was confirmed earlier than in previous years to assist local management in refining programmes within available budgets.

The local management committee leading each project assesses local needs to devise an integrated, costed and targeted proposal of interventions to support educationally disadvantaged students at local level. This project model approach is a key feature of the school completion programme. It allows the local management committee the autonomy to be creative and innovative in developing tailored support strategies for young people.

Each committee was requested to review its proposed programme of supports and to finalise an approved programme with the National Educational Welfare Board. Projects were advised to examine all elements of expenditure and to seek to reduce costs and achieve efficiencies while prioritising evidence based services to support children's educational outcomes.

The National Educational Welfare Board, in its role to give direction and support to projects, has assisted each project in this process to review plans to ensure front-line services are protected to the greatest extent possible. The board continues to work closely with management committees, schools and local school completion programme co-ordinators to ensure student supports are tailored to meet local needs. As a further support to projects in managing the challenges presented by programme adjustments, the Department has recently commissioned Pobal to undertake an analysis of existing operational and staffing arrangements with a view to providing advisory support to local management in such matters. It is intended that this work will commence shortly after Easter.

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