Parents and teachers have criticised Fine Gael's proposal for a means-tested educational youth wage to keep disadvantaged teenagers at school. Mr John Whyte, spokesman of the National Parents Council (post-primary), said he had talked to parents at a large Dublin suburban secondary school on Monday, and they had agreed with him that the idea was "stupid". "It would encourage 15- and 16-year-olds to get into a life of hand-outs and dependency.
"What would a 15- or 16-year-old do with £30 a week except smoke and drink it?" he asked. "It would be far better to spend the £50 million proposed on getting young people to stay on at school by improving the home-school liaison scheme or psychological services."
Mr Michael Corley, president of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, conceded that "the notion of a youth wage recognises the reality that increasing numbers of students are being tempted to leave school early by the prospect of taking up relatively low-paying jobs".
"However, the fact that means-testing would apply to this `wage' prompts serious concerns given the poor record of means-testing in so many of these types of schemes."
He also criticised the Fine Gael idea of education credit vouchers, to allow early school-leavers to take up later training, as "a middle-class concept which is unlikely to be used by early school-leavers in the way proposed".
Mr Billy Fitzpatrick, education officer of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, was also concerned that means-testing could lead to problems in schools, with some students receiving money and some not. His union would prefer that schools, rather than individual students, received extra resources.
However, he agreed with the Fine Gael document's emphasis on greater targeting of schools in disadvantaged areas, especially in the area of remedial (learning-support) teachers and guidance counsellors.