A new strategy which has been developed to counter the problem of early school-leavers in north Tipperary should be implemented throughout the State, according to one of the senior teachers who devised it.
The Collaboration Action Planning (CAP) model was developed following research in 48 north Tipperary schools which found that the reasons many young people opted out lay in the school experience itself.
"Most pupils like primary school. For many, the problems began when they entered post-primary school," is one of the conclusions reached in the Mol an Oige project report.
Many under-age school-leavers slipped through unnoticed because the School Attendance Act was not being adhered to, and agencies such as FAS were unaware of their existence.
"Mol an Oige provided planning time for teachers. For schools participating in the project, a team of teachers, usually four to six, met weekly," Mr Dan Condren, the principal of St Sheelan's College, Templemore, said. "They drew up an action plan to meet the needs of a group of weaker students, they began to implement it and they met every week to monitor the plan and to learn from the way it was working."
He was on secondment to the Mol an Oige project for five years, and is now calling on the Department of Education to implement the findings throughout the State. With the action plan implemented in the last two years in north Tipperary, there is evidence of improved retention rates and academic achievement.
"There is also improved self-esteem. That became a big issue with schools. A lot of teachers came to realise that the system hits hard at the self-esteem of weaker students," he said.
Sixty per cent of early school-leavers came from rural Ireland areas where disadvantage was generally spread fairly evenly." But the findings have relevance throughout the State. His 12 years as a school principal have made him realise the system is not meeting the needs of all students.
"Education is a commodity. It is measured in terms of academic grades. These grades are relevant for 60 to 70 per cent of students but for other students they are not relevant," he said.
In making schools more responsive to students' needs, teachers needed to overcome their isolation. "The nature of teaching is that teachers are experts in their own areas and teachers are expected to be able to solve all the problems they are confronted with in their own classroom. That is an unreasonable expectation," he said.
In all, 136 teachers in 35 primary schools became members of planning teams, along with 68 teachers in 13 secondary schools. Of the £933,000 cost, £700,000 came from the EU.
Part of the study involved research with 16 young people who left school before the Junior Cert. Where possible, the principals of their former schools, and their parents or guardians, were also interviewed.
"For most of the young people interviewed, early school-leaving was essentially a case of `dropping out' rather than a progression in their lives. The majority left school with no clear idea of what they were going to do. They appear to have received little guidance from the school to prepare them for leaving," the report states.
Mr Condren said that while the system had many problems, the "first front" to move on was empowering the teachers. "The way we did that was provide a structure for them to work together. Once that was provided, a lot of things followed in terms of new approaches to curriculum, involving parents, individual education plans and new approaches to remedial education."
He said the CAP approach encouraged teachers to reflect on their own practice and to learn from it through discussion with colleagues.
"Teachers are trapped in this system, too. That is the point. By enabling teachers to work together and learn from each other you liberate them from this entrapment and, in turn, they can help the students."