Madam, - There appears to be general agreement that approximately one thousand children drop out and vanish irretrievably from the education system annually on completing (if that's the word) their primary education. To the public mind what becomes of those vulnerable children thereafter is at best a mystery, at worst a matter of indifference. This is a national scandal.
The Education (Welfare) Act 2000 is fully in force for the past year-and-a-half, with the capacity to avert what has, for long, been a historical State failure. The problem remains, however.
Implicit, if not expressly stated, in Section 20 of the Act is the obligation placed upon a post-primary school on first registering a pupil to inform by notification in writing their primary counterpart to that effect. For its part, the primary school may remove a pupil's name from the school register only on receipt of the said notification.
Alas, this legal requirement has yet to come to the attention of most schools.
I have no doubt it would go some distance towards vindicating the individual child's right to education and simultaneously prove an earnest of the State's duty to promote the common good, were schools to comply with what the law, in this instance, reasonably demands.
It might even shed some light on the murky and depraved world within these shores where unidentified children are, possibly, being subjected to unspeakable crimes of physical and moral violation. - Yours etc.,
BERNARD MURNAGHAN, Riverstown, Dundalk, Co Louth.