Tom Kitt (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senator for giving me the opportunity, on behalf of the Department of Education and Science, to clarify the position regarding the appointment of educational welfare officers to the towns of Tuam and Ballinasloe in County Galway. The Education (Welfare) Act 2000 established the National Educational Welfare Board as the single national body with responsibility for school attendance. The Act provides a comprehensive framework promoting regular school attendance and tackling the problems of absenteeism and early school leaving.

To discharge its responsibilities, the board is developing a nationwide service that is accessible to schools, parents or guardians and others concerned with the welfare of young people. For that purpose, educational welfare officers, or EWOs, are being appointed and deployed throughout the country to provide a welfare-focused service to support regular school attendance and discharge the board's functions locally.

The board has appointed a chief executive officer, directors of corporate services and educational welfare services and a management team of eight staff. To date, 53 educational welfare staff have been appointed. That includes 29 former school attendance officers who transferred to the board from the existing service. The board has recently advertised a competition to fill a further 15 vacancies which will bring the total staff complement to 84.

At this stage of its development, the aim of the board is to provide a service to the most disadvantaged areas, including areas designated under the Government's RAPID programme and most at risk groups. Five regional teams have now been established with bases in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford and an educational welfare service is now available, for the first time, in the cities of Limerick, Galway and Kilkenny. Twelve towns with significant school-going populations, 11 of which are designated under the Government's RAPID programme, also now have an educational welfare officer allocated to them. Those towns are Dundalk, Drogheda, Navan, Athlone, Carlow, Wexford, Bray, Clonmel, Tralee, Ennis, Sligo and Letterkenny. In addition, the board will follow up urgent cases nationally, including in the towns of Tuam and Ballinasloe, where children are not currently receiving an education. Decisions regarding the assignment of staff to specific areas are a matter for the board, which is an independent statutory body. In 2004, the board will receive the first comprehensive data returns from schools and those will assist it in keeping the level of need for the new service in particular areas under review.

The board has also moved to provide a service to families who decide to have their children educated in places other than in recognised schools. A small number of people with the appropriate skills have been allocated to this work and assessments will commence shortly. The Department of Education and Science recently issued guidelines to assist the board in meeting its responsibilities in that area. An information leaflet and an application form are being prepared for issue to families who are educating their children at home.

Work is also proceeding on the establishment of the register for 16 and 17 year olds who leave school to enter employment. The board is also ensuring that information concerning the Act and the work of the board generally is made available to schools, parents and others as soon as possible. An introductory letter was issued to all schools last March. Guidelines are being prepared for schools on the reporting of student absences and a protocol outlining the interaction between schools and educational welfare staff is being developed with the assistance of the school implementation group recently established by the board. That group provides for consultation and collaboration between the board and school managers, principals, teachers and parents.

There is a range of schemes, initiatives and services dealing with educational disadvantage at both primary and post-primary level. Those include the school completion programme, the visiting teacher service for Travellers and the home-school-community liaison scheme. Each of those schemes contributes in a very positive way to promoting the education of children and young people. It is important that those schemes and the board co-operate with one another to ensure that there is a continuum of service to the child who may be at risk.

In that context, and as provided for under section 10 of the Act, it has been arranged that the Department of Education and Science work with the board to ensure that any opportunities for integrated working between educational welfare officers and staff on other educational disadvantage programmes, whose work involves an attendance element, are exploited to the maximum. The Department considers the implementation of protocols for such integrated working on attendance matters to be very important. When in place, those will assist the NEWB in carrying out its remit and ensure that all available existing resources are utilised to the optimum.

The provision for the NEWB in 2004 is €5.7 million. The provision has been determined in the light of developments to date, the overall resources available and the need to ensure a collaborative and co-operative approach by all involved in addressing issues of disadvantage. I trust this clarifies the position on this matter for the Senator and I thank him for raising this important and urgent issue.