Measures for early school-leavers may start too late to work

Minister Micheal Martin's concern for the plight of early school-leavers is to be applauded. As he so rightly says, they make up the majority of the long-term unemployed. The Minister is alarmed at the numbers of 15-and 16-year-olds quitting school to go into low-skilled jobs. The Minister intends to raise the school-leaving age - and to insist that those who leave school before the Leaving Certificate stay on in some form of education or training until they are 18 years of age.

How effective these measures will prove is a matter for debate. The issues for most early school-leavers are determined at a very young age and are not easily open to modification in late adolescence and early adulthood. In very many cases, these youngsters have very poor primary-school attendance records. Indeed, they are already part-time students by the age of 12.

If improvements are to occur, it's vital that support and monitoring systems are developed for them at junior primary school level. Language and mathematical development are For such youngsters, entry into a text-based second-level system can be a humiliating nightmare which fuels their desire to leave school early. Without the full implementation of the Remedial Education Report 1998, by Shiel and Morgan of St Patrick's Education Research Centre, primary provision for these youngsters will still leave them with a major barrier to later development. Coercion at a later stage will not substitute for early success. What is required is really major, targeted investment which far outreaches the very good initiatives already projected by the Minister.

Second-level attempts to compensate for the crushing sense of defeat and alienation that major reading deficits instil in pupils is a very difficult task. It cannot be overcome with a traditional approach.

These young students need very small classes and a "transition year" at the commencement of second level. This extra year should be devoted to English and mathematics and should be structured in such a way that every subject becomes a vehicle for improving basic skills. Increased remedial, psychological and counselling provision aimed at the support of this work is essential, since the emotional development of this group is often retarded - a fact which contributes a further layer of complexity to the issue.

Allowing young people whose core needs have been overlooked at a young age to pass on through the system without a total focus on their proficiency in the three Rs makes any later interventions and initiatives, however creative they may be, subject to long-term failure and rejection by these youngsters.

Pat O'Connor, headmaster of St Enda's Community School, Limerick