Paudge Connolly (Cavan-Monaghan, Independent)
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Question 670: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the progress to date with regard to the functioning of the National Educational Welfare Board; the number of education welfare officers in place throughout the country; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [19802/05]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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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. The general functions of the board are to ensure that each child attends a recognised school or otherwise receives a certain minimum education. The priority that I attach to supporting the NEWB in delivering on this goal is evident from the fact that the budget which has been allocated to the NEWB for 2005 is up by 20% on the 2004 allocation, to nearly €8 million.

To discharge its responsibilities, the board is developing a nationwide service that is accessible to schools, parents-guardians and others concerned with the welfare of young people. For this purpose, educational welfare officers, 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 service is developing on a continuing basis and the board received sanction in late 2004 from my Department to recruit an additional ten educational welfare officers. This brings its total authorised staffing complement to 94, comprising 16 HQ and support staff, five regional managers, 11 senior educational welfare officers and 62 educational welfare officers. These additional posts will ensure that every county will have an educational welfare service.

To date, the board has focused the resources available to it on providing a service to the most disadvantaged areas and most at-risk groups. Five regional teams have now been established with bases in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford and staff have been deployed in areas of greatest disadvantage and in areas designated under the Government's RAPID programme. Some 13 towns with significant school going populations, 12 of which are designated under the Government's RAPID programme, also now have an educational welfare officer allocated to them.

The board issued an information leaflet to 330,000 families and 4,000 schools in March 2004. The leaflet targeted parents and guardians of children aged between six and 16 years of age and young people aged 16 and 17 who have left school early to start work. It outlined the role that parents and guardians play in ensuring that their children do not miss out on education and training and also gave information about the National Educational Welfare Board. In addition, the board launched a new lo-call telephone number to inform parents and guardians about their legal role and responsibilities under the Education (Welfare) Act 2000.

Guidelines were issued by the NEWB to all primary and second level schools in January of this year on reporting student absences. The guidelines provide step-by-step advice on how and when school attendance returns should be made and on how a new website established by the NEWB can be used by schools to comply with their legal obligations to report student absences to the board.

The NEWB collated the first hard data on school attendance nationally during the summer of 2004. The data revealed the level of non-school attendance in Ireland for the first time. Two core themes were immediately apparent from the data: absenteeism is prevalent throughout the country and it is significantly worse in disadvantaged areas. Under the terms of the Education (Welfare) Act 2000, one of the functions of the board is to conduct and commission research into the reasons for non-attendance on the part of students and into the strategies and programmes designed to prevent it. The board is in the process of establishing two research projects in 2005, one of which will focus on an analysis of student absenteeism returns.

The first assessments of children being educated in places other than in recognised schools, for example, the home, have been carried out by authorised persons specially trained for the work. By the end of March 2005, 40 children had been registered as being in receipt of a certain minimum education. Assessments have also taken place in a number of independent schools and these children will also be registered.

I understand that the board issued the first school attendance notices, SANs, to parents in March 2005. SANs are legal notices requiring the parent to send the child to a named school for a specified period of time. They are the first step in taking legal action against parents who have failed over time to co-operate with educational welfare officers to ensure that their children attend school and where the board considers that parents could do more to uphold their children's right to an education.

The board recently launched its first strategic plan entitled, Every Day Counts, to cover the period 2005 to 2007. It sets out five strategic goals which will focus the work of the board over the next three years. The NEWB believes that every day counts in a child's education. Consequently, encouraging and supporting regular school attendance is at the heart of the work of the board.

I will be keeping the issue of the NEWB's staffing under review in the light of the roll-out of services and any further proposals that the board may put to me in relation to clearly identified priority needs.