The scheme which aims to encourage pupils to stay on at school by linking them with business mentors has grown by 70 per cent over the past year, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin announced yesterday.
The annual report of the Schools' Business Partnership (SBP) 2005/06 showed that 37 new schools and businesses had registered for joint programmes.
The aim of the scheme is to encourage students who are at risk of leaving school early to instead continue with their studies with the advice of business mentors, talks by employees from local businesses and a summer work placement programmes.
The Minister said: "The Schools' Business Partnership helps schools and students to break the cycle of early school-leaving. More and more schools and businesses are being twinned and are offering a mentoring programme for students."
The programme had helped hundreds of students to value their schooling more, develop social skills and consider career options they might otherwise have overlooked, she said.
Managed by Business in the Community Ireland (BITCI), the SBP had almost completed its first phase of matching in excess of 100 schools. The next two years would see the SBP matching corporate partners with 50 new schools, the Minister said.
Pauric O'Grady, chairman of the BITCI education taskforce, said that the programmes had experienced an unprecedented surge of interest and engagement again this year. "The success of the SBP is evidenced by the large number of businesses participating and the time given over by many CEOs and senior management who are currently mentoring individual students," he said.
It had been rewarding to witness the national roll-out of the summer work placement programme, which had resulted in the generation of new jobs for many Leaving Cert students across a range of industries, he added.
The SBP is active in 19 counties. Since its inception two years ago, in excess of 40 seminars had been hosted at regional locations, with over 200 school principals participating.
Marks & Spencer is the lead programme sponsor with SBP and further sponsorship is provided by Cadbury Ireland. The companies which have represented business master classes include Coillte, Johnson & Johnson, National Irish Bank, IBM, VHI, An Post, KPMG, Élan, Anglo-Irish Bank and One Direct.