Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)
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Question 181: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the retention rate of students to leaving certificate for the second level schools in Finglas, Dublin 11; and the breakdown of the average, the highest and the lowest rates recorded. [17763/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Retention data on individual schools or on schools in a particular local area are not made available by my department. However, as the Deputy will be aware a lot of investment is being made by the Government both in initiatives to encourage more young people from disadvantaged areas to finish school and in providing greater second chance opportunities for those who left school early.

The total provision for educational inclusion programmes in 2006 is more than €640m across all levels of education, as compared with almost €600m in 2005. The wide variety of measures in place for tackling educational disadvantage and social exclusion range from pre-school interventions, supports for tackling children's literacy problems, reduced pupil teacher ratios, increased capitation grants, measures to tackle early school leaving and strengthen ties between the school, the family and the community.

With regard to curriculum, my Department's strategies have included widening the educational experience available to students, which aim to achieve a greater level of inclusiveness in curricular provision and meet the needs of the diversity of pupils in our second level schools, by expanding funding for programmes such as the Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme (LCVP), Vocational Preparation Training (VPT) and the Leaving Certificate Applied (LCA).

The School Completion Programme was implemented to directly target those in danger of dropping out of the education system and is a key component of my Department's strategy to discriminate positively in favour of children and young people who are at risk of early school leaving, and in line with current thinking favours an integrated cross-community and cross-sectoral approach based on the development of local strategies to ensure maximum participation levels in the education process. It entails targeting individual young people aged 4-18, both in and out of school, and arranging supports to address inequalities in education access, participation and outcomes.

The Home School Community Liaison (HSCL) Scheme is concerned with maximising active involvement of children in the learning process, in particular those who might be at risk of failure; promoting active co-operation between home, school and relevant community agencies in promoting the educational interests of the children; raising awareness in parents of their own capacities to enhance their children's educational progress and to assist them in developing relevant skills; enhancing the children's uptake from education, their retention in the educational system, their continuation to post-compulsory education and to third level and their attitudes to lifelong learning and disseminating the positive outcomes of the scheme throughout the school system generally.

There is evidence of improvement in the levels of educational attainment of young people from disadvantaged areas in recent years. Indeed, I am pleased to be able to tell the Deputy that a recent report by the HEA showed that the percentage of 17 to 19 year olds from Dublin 11 entering 3rd level institutions in 2004 was twice the 1998 level.

Another positive sign is the CSO data which shows that the number of 20-24 year olds in Ireland that had attained upper second-level education (or equivalent), has improved steadily over the last five years, as increasing opportunities have been made available in the further education and training sector. The level of educational attainment of Irish young people is ahead of the EU average on that measure.