Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senator. His strong motivation and his background as a teacher have given him a great appreciation of educational values. I welcome the debate on the issue. I also welcome the opportunity, on behalf of my colleague, the Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills, to outline the position regarding this matter.

The JCSP has operated in schools nationally since 1996 as an intervention at junior cycle for students who, for a variety of reasons, have experienced difficulties in school and hence are considered to be at risk of leaving school early. The programme is founded on the premise that all young people can be successful at school. It provides a curriculum framework, which assists schools and individual teachers in adopting a student-centred approach to education. Students are given enhanced opportunities to engage with the curriculum and to achieve success at school through a system of profiling of achievement. It covers a broad range of personal and social skills, as well as academic achievements.

Since poor levels of literacy and numeracy have been widely acknowledged as factors that hinder student progress the programme sees the implementation of literacy and numeracy strategies as fundamental. The JCSP support service works with schools to employ classroom strategies to develop students' literacy and numeracy skills and to encourage them to adopt a whole-school approach to literacy and numeracy. This is facilitated by providing teachers with ongoing professional development on cross-curricular approaches to literacy and numeracy as well by the provision of resources annually to support the implementation of specific initiatives in both areas.

Currently the JCSP is offered in 240 schools, 184 of which are DEIS schools, providing support for 9,000 students. More than €3.07 million has been spent on this over the last three years with €1 million being allocated for 2010. The Demonstration Library pilot project, which forms part of the JCSP literacy initiative, provides professionally staffed libraries for JCSP schools. The project was announced as a pilot in 2001, with libraries being set up in 11 JCSP schools in 2002. The Department, through the JCSP support service, provides the support necessary for schools to set up and equip high quality school libraries, develop structured library based strategies with ICT support for JCSP students with literacy difficulties, employ professionally qualified school librarians who work with the teaching staff to develop and implement the JCSP literacy strategy and who are supported by the project librarian and the JCSP support service, and participate in an ongoing monitoring and evaluation process which is a major part of the project. To date, 30 schools have been included in the project, 25 of which are DEIS schools.

The librarians in many of these schools are employed on fixed term contracts and one further school has a vacancy. The remaining schools are either staffed by librarians redeployed from the library service or those with contracts not falling for renewal.

The House will be aware of the Government decision to implement a recruitment and promotion moratorium in the public sector to facilitate a permanent, structural reduction in the numbers of staff serving in the public sector to contribute significant and ongoing savings to the Exchequer. The terms of this moratorium require that no public service post, however arising, may be filled by recruitment, promotion, nor payment of an allowance for the performance of duties at a higher grade. As the Tánaiste has set out, this decision also applies to temporary appointments on a fixed-term basis and to the renewal of such contracts. Exemptions from the moratorium are, in the context of the public finances, a matter for serious deliberation. The Tánaiste is, however, working together with her colleague, the Minister for Finance, in relation to those aspects of the moratorium having a particular impact in the education sector. The issue of librarians employed in the demonstration library pilot project is one such issue and I am pleased to confirm that, having regard to the factors discussed above, it has been decided to retain the library staff for the coming school year.

I thank the Senator for allowing me the opportunity to set out the position on this matter. I repeat how much we value his contribution, given that he comes from a teaching background.