YOUNG people who leave school early and unqualified will have to maintain a link with the education system under new legislation to be published next month.
At the Guidance Counsellors' Conference in Tullamore, Co Offaly, yesterday the Minister for Education, Mr Martin, expressed concern that in some second-level schools in disadvantaged areas the proportion of students not staying on until the age of 18 was as high as 60 per cent.
Next month, as part of new draft school attendance legislation, the Minister will announce details of a scheme under which all unqualified school-leavers under 18 will have to maintain their links, on a part-time basis, with the education system.
Employers will not be allowed to take on such young people unless they are doing a part-time Leaving Certificate Applied, Post Leaving Certificate or Youthreach course. Up to 9,000 part-time places on such courses will have to be created. At present there is no part-time element on these courses.
Another part of the package will be a £2 million fund to help schools in disadvantaged areas keep more students on until 18. Schools will be funded to devise and put on programmes tailored to their individual needs. The money can be spent on extra teachers, after-school activities, sport, remedial provision or home-school liaison.
In this way the Minister hopes to increase the retention rate in the senior cycle of second-level schools, which was 82 per cent last year. Department of Education sources say it has risen again slightly over the past 12 months after stalling last year.
In 1995 the Education White Paper set a target retention rate of 90 per cent by 2000. The Department aims to introduce this scheme on a pilot basis in a number of disadvantaged schools in Dublin and Cork next September with the aim of making it a Statewide scheme.
Mr Martin warned recently that early school-leavers were "mortgaging their future".