Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

The most recent figures available regarding school completion rates report on students who began their post-primary education in 2017. Of those students who entered first year in 2017, 90% sat the leaving certificate examination in 2022 or 2023. A total of 97.8% sat the junior certificate - now called the junior cycle - examination in 2020. While the latest retention rate to leaving certificate stage of 90% represents a decrease of one percentage point on the retention rate for the 2016 post-primary entry cohort, Ireland has one of the lowest rates of early school leavers in comparison with our European counterparts. Looking at the timelines, children who started in 2016 completed their leaving certificate or junior certificate during Covid times when there were no exams. Naturally, that led to a somewhat higher rate. A series of reports which record retention rate trends in post-primary schools over the past 26 years are available on the Department’s website. Of course, ensuring children remain in school as long as possible to undertake the leaving certificate and junior certificate is a priority for all of us.

In addition to the universal supports available to schools, such as school guidance and well-being supports, there are targeted supports such as the school completion programme, which covers 783 schools with a total population in excess of 250,000 students, and the Traveller and Roma education strategy. I know from speaking to members of the Traveller and Roma communities recently that their focus is on the junior cycle rather than just the senior cycle, unfortunately. Those numbers are very challenging at the moment. We need to do everything we can to support those students, particularly those who are most at risk, in order that they stay at school and achieve the best they can. Those supports are a key part of our response to supporting those children. They work in tandem with other supports, including the home-school community liaison, HSCL, co-ordinators and the education welfare service under my Department’s DEIS programme.

My Department, in conjunction with the Tusla education support service, TESS, is also undertaking a five-year plan to improve school attendance, as I mentioned. Those measures were introduced and announced recently. They are being rolled out. I wish to mention the Anseo programme, which is the new evidence-based framework to help schools analyse and respond to attendance data. This is central to everything we do. If we want children to stay in school to complete their exams, we need to make sure they are there in the first instance. That is feedback I am hearing strongly.

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