Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Junior Certificate School Programme (JCSP) is a national programme sponsored by the Department of Education and the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment. Introduced in 1996, it is a social inclusion programme that is aimed at students who are identified as being at risk of being socially or academically isolated or at risk of early school leaving before the (then) Junior Certificate has been achieved.

One of the initiatives under the JCSP is the JCSP Demonstration Library Project. School librarians work as part of a network of librarians in the JCSP Demonstration Library Project. Within the Demonstration Library Project, there are 32 professional librarians employed by the CDETB who are based in 30 schools that operate the library facility. They are managed by the Senior Librarian.

Librarians are responsible, together with key school staff, for drawing up and implementing library strategies to tackle the literacy difficulties experienced by many JCSP students. Each year, each library receives a grant from JCSP. The grant funds literacy and numeracy initiatives, book buying and resources for the library. Expenditure is approved in advance by the Senior Librarian. Funding of €2.5m was provided by my Department to the JCSP Demonstration Library Project in 2022.

The JCSP Digital Library is a centrally managed online eBook and eAudiobook lending library that is free for students and staff in all JCSP/DEIS schools. The collection consists of a wide range of teenage and young adult titles to suit all year groups, interests and ability levels. In addition, the library hosts collections of titles to support teacher CPD and staff/parent book clubs.

The collection currently consists of over 10,500 unique titles, with multiple copies and/or class sets of many of these, bringing the overall total to over 45,000 items. Over 600 titles are available for simultaneous use, meaning they are always available to borrow without wait lists or holds. New titles are being added to the collections on an ongoing basis. To date, over 100,000 individual students and 9,000 staff from over 220 schools have been set up with library membership. Borrowing levels are increasing year on year with over 84,700 items borrowed from the library in 2021-2022 – a 47% increase on the previous year.

As part of the implementation of the Framework for Junior Cycle (2015), it was agreed to carry out a review of the JCSP and consider the extent to which the needs of students undertaking the JCSP are met through the Junior Cycle. The work of the review group was paused as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated necessary shift in work priorities and work is now ongoing to recommence the review.