The Tanaiste has welcomed an ESRI report which shows that, a year after leaving school, more than four out of five school-leavers have either entered further education or found a job.
Ms Harney also welcomed the finding of the 1996 annual school-leavers survey that 44 per cent of school-leavers were in employment a year after they had left school, the highest proportion since 1990.
However, she expressed concern about the 4 per cent of school leavers, around 2,700 students, who continue to leave with no qualifications.
The report, The Economic Status of School-Leavers, 1994- 1996, found that unemployment among school-leavers a year after they left school fell from 20 per cent in 1994 to under 13 per cent last year.
The ESRI also indicated that the numbers going on to further education fell last year by nearly 5 per cent. The report concluded that because of the expanding economy some school-leavers may have gone straight into jobs who in previous years would taken up further education.
The ESRI survey, which was based on a sample of over 2,500 young people, was carried out in the autumn of 1996 on school-leavers who had left second-level education in the school year 19941995. It found that by May 1996 44 per cent of the previous year's school-leavers were in jobs, 12.7 per cent were unemployed and 37.5 per cent were students.
The survey found the likelihood of school-leavers being unemployed was directly related to the level of qualifications achieved at school.
The unemployment rate one year after leaving schools for those with no qualifications at all was 69.2 per cent. This compared with 31.8 per cent for those with the Junior Certificate with a Vocational Preparation and Training year; 28.5 per cent for those with just a Junior Certificate; 12.6 per cent for those with the Leaving Certificate and a Post Leaving Cert; and 15.3 per cent for those with just the Leaving Certificate.
The report found a dramatically widening gap in unemployment rates since 1980 between those leaving school after the Leaving Certificate and those leaving with no qualifications. In 1980 the unemployment rate for the latter was 14 percentage points higher than for the former. By 1996 this gap had grown to 53 percentage points: the unemployment rate among those with no qualifications was 61 per cent compared with 8 per cent among those with a Leaving Certificate.
The report shows that girls continue to do better than boys. Significantly more boys (19.2 per cent) leave at Junior Certificate level than girls (11.5 per cent), partly due to the numbers who enter apprenticeships at that age.
A higher percentage of girls leave school having done the Leaving Cert (86 per cent compared to 76 per cent). The unemployment rate in 1996 among school-leavers whose fathers were also unemployed was 39 per cent.