First steps on the road to ending disadvantage

The £57 million package announced by Micheal Martin last month to deal with educational disadvantage must be measured against two yardsticks: the aims set out in the 1995 Education White Paper and the targets in the education component of the 1997 National Anti-Poverty Strategy.

In a recent Combat Poverty Agency discussion paper, researchers Scott Boldt and Brendan Devine defined educational disadvantage as being "concerned with the circumstances of those from `poor' socio-economic backgrounds who experience difficulties within formal schooling or who have left the educational system with few or no educational qualifications." Three key aims were set out by the White Paper to tackle this chronic and complex problem: the raising of the school-leaving age to 16; increasing to 90 per cent the proportion of 16-18 years olds who sit the Leaving Cert; and undertaking a programme to reach out more effectively to the minority of under-achieving and alienated students whose needs are not met by the present broadly-based Junior Cert.

The three related targets laid down by the National Anti-Poverty Strategy (NAPS) are the elimination of early school-leaving before the Junior Cert; increasing Leaving Cert participation rates to 90 per cent by 2000 and 98 per cent by 2007; and reaching a situation in which there are no primary pupils with serious literacy and numeracy problems within the next five years.

How are these aims and targets being met? The raising of the school-leaving age will be part of new legislation next year, which will also set up a new National Educational Welfare Board to bring some order to the largely undocumented problem of poor school attendance - one of the key predictors of students dropping out of school early.

The 90 per cent school completion target, let alone 98 per cent, is proving problematic. Minister Martin admitted last spring that the present 82 per cent level had "probably peaked."

He said the present economic boom, with its encouragement to children from poorer families to leave school early to take up low-paid jobs, was one factor in this. He said employers of such young people had a particular responsibility to ensure they had some access to further education and training at least up to 18. Similarly any programme to reach those children under 16 who are "switched off" from school is going to be a lengthy one. The Minister has started on the road with his pilot scheme for eight- to 15-year-old early school-leavers. This will try to identify such children, put in place a tracking system to make sure they do not drift out of education unnoticed, and set up pilot projects to try to keep them in school.

There is also a clear need to overhaul the Junior Cert syllabus to make it more imaginative and practical, as well as expanding its foundation element, in order to make it more attractive to disadvantaged children. The indications are the that Junior Cert Review Group will make recommendations along these lines when it reports next year.

However, the NAPS target of significantly reducing, let alone eliminating the estimated 4,000 children who do not make it as far as the Junior Cert exam, is clearly one for the relatively distant future.

Experts such as Scott Boldt and Brendan Devine, also emphasise the vital importance of moving even earlier, at primary and pre-school level, to identify problem pupils and to involve parents, community organisations and health and social welfare agencies in efforts to ensure they do not drop out. It is estimated that nearly 1,000 children never even make the transition from primary to second level, and the traumatic transition between the two levels is the beginning of early school leaving for many more.

Serious literacy and numeracy problems among primary schoolchildren represent another extremely difficult area, and one which will take far longer than five years to tackle effectively. The 225 extra primary remedial teachers announced by Martin are a small step in the right direction, although the Conference of Religious of Ireland has queried the Department's over-reliance on remedial teaching.

Dr Mark Morgan, the respected researcher from St Patrick's College in Drumcondra, Dublin, has argued that remedial teaching needs to be complemented a preventative approach. He points to the success of the Success for All primary scheme in Baltimore in the US, which puts on innovative reading programmes; a family support team providing parenting education and help with behavioural problems; and special in-service training for teachers.

In a recent Combat Poverty Agency paper on comparative international initiatives, Morgan, stressing that no single intervention can solve the problem of early school-leaving, recommended a wide range of initiatives.

Among the most innovative are the employment of community workers as part of the home-school-liaison scheme; linking the Leaving Cert Applied with specific industries; and more projects involving parents, community groups and local business as in the BITE initiative in Ballymun, which helps disadvantaged students bridge the gap between second- and third-level education.

Another proposal is for schools to organise themselves not along `streaming' lines, which is seen as particularly undermining for lower-achieving children, but according to the `academy system' used in some San Francisco schools, under which `at risk' 15- to 18-year-olds study together and focus on a particular occupational sector, such as health or the computer industry.

American research shows that extra-curricular activities, particularly sport and art, are key elements in keeping young people in school. Morgan notes that facilities for sport and art in many disadvantaged schools in Ireland are poor. This is another area where the Minister for Education and Science has shown himself eager to move - for example, by developing PE as a public exam subject - but one where he has another long road to travel.

The same could be said for much of the Department's efforts in this area to date. For example, despite frequent promises - by the Minister among others - the much-praised visiting teacher scheme for Traveller children, perhaps the most disadvantaged group of all, has yet to be extended to the 12 counties where it currently does not exist. CORI points out that no more than two per cent of the Department's budget goes to combatting educational disadvantage.

Two months ago, Boldt and Devine said that the limited number of interventions by the Department "does not reflect well on its stated policies on educational disadvantage." Three weeks later Martin launched his ambitious £57 million programme as a significant first step towards improving that poor record.