Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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283. To ask the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs why Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, has issued a directive stating that the monitoring of school attendance is no longer deemed to be part of the school completion programme and responsibility has now transferred to the school itself; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [16405/16]

Katherine Zappone (Dublin South West, Independent)
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Tusla, the Child & Family Agency, have advised that the guidance issued to Projects in April 2016 is to the effect that effort to improve attendance should be through supports that encourage and support attendance. Tusla emphasised that the School Completion Programme continues to monitor school attendance in order to identify young people in need of an intervention.

Tusla further advised that the collection of information on pupil attendance is a matter for the school and always has been, whereas the further use of this information for the purpose of attendance tracking of children at risk of early school leaving is a matter for the School Completion Project.

Tusla issued guidance to projects in relation to attendance tracking following the realisation that some Projects were employing staff on behalf of individual schools to take the school attendance. Tusla advised that School Completion Funding should be used as a follow up to schools’ own attendance monitoring and to focus on activities to improve the attendance, participation and retention of children and young people in schools.

The School Completion Programme aims to retain young people in the formal education system to completion of senior cycle and to generally improve the school attendance, participation and retention of children and young people who are at risk of educational disadvantage. The programme is a targeted intervention aimed at school communities identified through the Department of Education and Skills’ DEIS Action Plan for Educational Inclusion. It provides supports annually to approximately 37,000 children.