James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The school completion programme aims to improve the school attendance, participation and retention of young people who are at risk of educational disadvantage. The programme provides targeted supports to approximately 36,000 children and young people. Since 1 January 2014, Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, under the remit of my Department, has had operational responsibility for the programme. The establishment of the agency brought together the educational welfare programmes, which had previously been under the remit of the former National Educational Welfare Board, as part of a new integrated response to meet the needs of children at risk of educational disadvantage.

The establishment of Tusla, encompassing key educational welfare programmes, along with its broader focus on child and family welfare, presents an opportunity to shape more effective policy and practice that will help to address educational disadvantage. In its recently published review of the school completion programme, the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, indicated the programme is a key measure to deliver policy goals to secure good education outcomes for children at risk of early school leaving.

My Department will continue to work closely with Tusla to strengthen the operation of the programme and to realise its potential for these children. My Department will also participate in the interdepartmental group which the Minister for Education and Skills proposes to establish to consider the roles of different Departments in delivering the delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS, programme in a joined-up way.

Tusla, with its commitment to a whole-family approach to addressing childhood disadvantage and its statutory responsibility for key educational welfare services, has a key role to play as part of a cross-departmental effort to develop a more integrated and effective response to the issue of educational disadvantage. Given the integrated approach we are now taking, I believe the school completion programme is most appropriate to the remit of my Department and of Tusla.

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