A £4.5 million package to encourage schools to devise their own plans to deal with early school-leaving has been announced by the Minister for Education, Mr Martin.
At the same time the Department of Education released figures which showed that although, on average, around 83 per cent of young people are now staying on at school until the Leaving Certificate, in 16 per cent of second-level schools fewer than 60 per cent stay on through the senior cycle and in 27 per cent fewer than 70 per cent stay on.
Mr Martin said: "Not finishing school is the most significant cause of keeping people caught in cycles of disadvantage and it must be a key national priority to radically address this problem."
He said he was determined to "make a major drive to increase the number of pupils who stay in school and complete a Leaving Certificate. It is not acceptable that we continue to have over 10,000 teenagers a year who leave full-time education without a qualification."
The new scheme is aimed at schools with high proportions of students from deprived backgrounds, most of them in urban areas. With the help of a co-ordinator, who will be a seconded principal with experience in this area, they will have to apply for funding to devise and implement their own plans to deal with early school-leaving. The 40 schools chosen will be given almost £40,000 each over three years.
Each school will have to adhere to a three-year "retention agreement" with the Department which lays down clear targets to be achieved in terms of more young people staying on to Leaving Certificate. The schools must also establish links with out-of-school agencies like partnerships, community groups and health boards to help them work with "at risk" students and their families.
The Department lists initiatives schools might implement. These include the systematic tracking of absentee students, including checking them on a daily basis; payment for extra teaching hours for "at risk" students; after-hours initiatives like homework clubs; better home-school liaison; induction programmes early in the first year of second-level schooling for "at risk" pupils and closer liaison with the primary schools they come from; sport and leisure clubs; and individual numeracy and literacy tuition.
Of the 10-11,000 students who currently drop out before the Leaving Certificate, 6-7,000 leave after the Junior Certificate, 3,000 before the Junior Cert., and around 1,000 do not make the transition from primary school.
The figures released yesterday by the Department show that in 112 schools (15 per cent of the total) 91 per cent or more students stay on to Leaving Certificate; in 157 schools (21 per cent) 86-90 per cent stay on; in 131 schools (17 per cent) 81-85 per cent stay on; in 153 schools (20 per cent) 71-80 per cent stay on; in 86 schools (11 per cent) 61-70 per cent stay on; in 53 schools (7 per cent) 51-60 per cent stay on; and in 67 (9 per cent) fewer than 50 per cent stay on.