Depleted school attendance service

FEWER than 40 welfare officers will be monitoring pupil attendance when the country’s 4,000 schools reopen next week.

The new Education Welfare Board set up last July has just 37 staff. A further 36 are being recruited but won’t be in place until Christmas at the earliest. But a report commissioned by the Welfare Board shows that 360 staff are needed to provide a complete, nationwide service as envisaged under the Education Welfare Act.

The delay means that only Dublin, Cork and Waterford will have a school attendance service from next week and the attendance of some of the country’s most disadvantaged children will be left unsupervised. Opposition politicians say the old service, which involved the gardaí and truancy officers, should have been left in place until the necessary staff was available nationwide. Fine Gael’s Olwyn Enright says disadvantage can’t be tackled if children simply aren’t at school.