No extra staff to check absenteeism

EXTRA staff to tackle school absenteeism will not be appointed next year because Education Minister Noel Dempsey believes their work is being done by existing services.

He also believes laws should not have been changed to remove the role of school attendance officers from gardaí.

The Education (Welfare) Act 2000 empowers the National Educational Welfare Board (NEWB) to monitor school attendance, but the board has only appointed 70 staff so far.

It says it needs 330 staff to reach every school in the country and was disappointed to be allocated only €5.7m for next year in this week’s Estimates, instead of the 25m it had sought.

But Mr Dempsey said the work of the NEWB’s education welfare officers (EWOs) is duplicating the job of existing staff operating other schemes.

“There are 500 home school community liaison (HSCL) co-ordinators on the ground, one of whose main functions is to combat absenteeism. There was never a government commitment to give the NEWB 330 staff,” the minister said.

He said absenteeism was also being addressed as part of 82 government-funded school completion programmes.

Mr Dempsey said if he was drafting the legislation, introduced by his predecessor Michael Woods, he would not have taken the gardaí completely out of the school attendance service.

“The fact that gardaí had reason to go in and out of schools was useful. There are aspects of the legislation that need to be reviewed, which is not a criticism of the board, but I will be meeting them soon to discuss these issues,” he said.

Last night, NEWB chief executive Eddie Ward said there was no overlap between the work of EWOs and other services.

“We have looked at this question and we’re very satisfied there won’t be any duplication, but we are working out a protocol on how the various services can compliment each other,” he said.

“The home school community liaison service is only available in about 10% of schools and school completion staff work mainly in disadvantaged areas, but we are a national service for every school in the country,” said Mr Ward. The NEWB, which had hoped to appoint 148 extra staff next year, is hopeful the funding can be increased before the Budget is finalised, otherwise services will not be able to expand until 2005.

The National Parents Council (Primary) said it was pointless for the Government to create a statutory body to help the most vulnerable children in society, without giving it the proper resources.

The Irish National Teachers Organisation disagreed with Mr Dempsey’s assessment of the HSCL co-ordinators’ role.

General secretary John Carr said they had no statutory powers but have a support and encouragement role vital to increasing parental participation of their children in education.