Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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Question 127: To ask the Minister for Education and Science his views in relation to the stay-in-school retention initiative; if his attention has been drawn to the considerable concern at the phasing out of this initiative in certain schools; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9705/04]

Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)
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In 2002, my Department introduced the school completion programme or SCP, which is a new and significantly expanded programme to deal with early school leaving incorporating the learning, experience and best practice derived from previous early school leaving initiatives, namely the eight to 15 early school leaver initiative, ESLI, and stay in school retention initiative at second level, SSRI.

Evidence generated from the pilot phases of the school completion programme shows that the most effective way of addressing educational disadvantage is through an integrated services approach involving primary and post-primary schools, parents, communities and relevant statutory and voluntary agencies. This approach, which my Department is now taking to address the problem of early school leaving, replaces the previous process of funding individual second level schools under the stay in school retention initiative.

The 82 SCP projects, comprising 112 second-level schools and 288 primary schools, being supported and the 53 SSRI schools not originally selected for the project strand are being supported on a phasing out basis under the school completion programme to 31 August 2005. This involves providing 50% of the 2002-03 allocation for the school year 2003-04 and 25% of the 2002-03 allocation for 2004-05.

The options for the future of the school completion programme are being considered in the context of a broad review of all of the initiatives to tackle educational disadvantage and early school leaving which is under way in my Department.