More than 84,000 children missed school for significant lengths of time last year, but the group responsible for attendance is grossly underfunded, writes Carl O'Brien
When the envelope arrived through the letter box, Mary suddenly started to panic. It was from the State body charged with implementing school attendance laws. Her 15-year-old son Aaron had been out of school for several months. Now an official from the National Educational Welfare Board (NEWB) wanted an urgent meeting with her.
"I almost had a nervous breakdown. I thought, 'I'm going to end up in Mountjoy'. It put the fear of God in me. I was thinking was I a bad mother. Maybe I wasn't good enough," says Mary, a lone parent with five children who lives in a three-bedroom council house in a Dublin suburb.
Aaron had made the transition from primary to secondary school without any major problems. After a year or so the trouble began. He started getting involved in blazing rows with his teacher, getting in fights, skipping school. By the age of 15 he was staying in bed in the morning, refusing to go to school.
"I was trying my best, but he wasn't listening," Mary says. "He'd be staying out till all hours, he wouldn't get up in the morning. At work, I'd be praying that he went to school."
The Education Welfare Act (2000) requires parents to ensure their children attend school until they reach 16 or have completed three years of secondary education.
Under the old 1926 school attendance legislation, children themselves were punished for dropping out of school, usually by detention in industrial schools. These days the responsibility lies with parents who may be fined, or even jailed, for serious breaches of school attendance laws. These steps, however, are a measure of last resort, where all other options have failed.
The NEWB, the body responsible for ensuring every child attends school or receives an education, places its emphasis on welfare rather than sanctions. Most of its work involves exploring the reasons why children aren't going to school, and finding solutions for children and their families.
The sheer scale of the problem of children missing out on education is only beginning to emerge as the NEWB conducts detailed research into school attendance across the country.
Studies suggest that one in five students is dropping out of school before sitting the Leaving Cert. This figure rises to more than half in some of the most disadvantaged parts of the country. One-in-20, or 3,200 students, drop out before taking the Junior Cert. And some 1,000 children are not even making the transition from primary to secondary school every year.
Some 84,000 children under the age of 16 missed out on 20 days of school during the 2004-05 school year. The figures are alarming, yet the drop-out rates and high levels of absenteeism remain a largely hidden aspect of the education system.
HIGH SCHOOL-LEAVING and drop-out rates don't fit with the narrative arc of the country's glittering economic success story, where education is supposed to be our most highly-prized asset. Instead, it seems, many parents still don't appreciate the importance of school attendance. Meanwhile, the State is providing just a trickle of the resources necessary to the NEWB and other bodies to tackle early school-leaving and absenteeism.
So why are so many children failing to attend school regularly? It's a question that occupies the minds of the NEWB's 73 education and welfare officers.
"Our experience and research shows that children miss school for a variety of reasons other than illness," says the NEWB's chief executive, Eddie Ward. "Children may skip school because of a disadvantaged family background, or bad previous experiences with school.
"Other reasons why children might be kept out of school might be so they can babysit, go shopping, go on holidays. We're keen to confront any culture of non-attendance, including those days that parents sometimes think don't count - the mid-season holidays, the days taken for shopping, etc."
Foreign holidays in the middle of school term are a particular target for the NEWB. A recently conducted MORI poll of 1,000 adults, to be published shortly by the board, indicates that one-in-six families are taking their children on holiday during term time. The figures also suggest it's a problem that straddles the class divides. For example, those at the lowest and the highest end of the socio-economic scale were among those most likely to take their children out of school during term.
While absenteeism and drop-out rates are a problem common to all areas, recent research shows it is a much bigger problem in disadvantaged areas.
At post-primary level, for example, the average rates of non-attendance for 20 days or more are over four times higher in the most disadvantaged areas compared with the least disadvantaged.
THE ABILITY OF the board's education and welfare officers to respond to serious cases of absenteeism is crucial, say those working on the ground.
"When someone has dropped out of school, it's sometimes the first step on the road towards ending up in the criminal justice system," says Jean Rafter, a regional manager for NEWB based in Tallaght.
"You need to respond quickly. If you can hold them in school, and keep that link with the community, that's hugely important . . . School is more than just education. It's stability and normality as well." The problem for many officers on the ground is being able to respond quickly to at-risk children.
For example, some 1,000 children each year are not transferring from primary to secondary school. The problem is particularly acute in the case of Travellers and other minorities.
Áine Forde, an education and welfare officer who works in the west Dublin area, says cases require a huge investment of time and energy.
There are no quick fixes or simple solutions, she says. "It's very much a day-to-day process with some of the students. Some can make the transition back to school, but for others you have to exhaust every possible measure. Ultimately, we try to get across the message that we're there to help and support them."
However, there are just 73 education and welfare officers in the country, the equivalent of one for every 12,000 children. Most officers have a backlog of several hundred urgent cases. All this means, say officers, is that there is little scope for preventative work. The bulk of their work is responding to crisis situations that may have building up for months or even years.
Mothers such as Mary, whose 15-year-old had refused to go to school for months, say they are deeply grateful for the intervention of the education and welfare service. Through the ongoing intervention of an NEWB officer, her son was eventually persuaded to attend a meeting with the teacher he had fallen out with. After several weeks of home tuition, he agreed to return to school to complete his Junior Cert.
"It was the first time that someone in authority wasn't talking down to him," Mary says. "[ The NEWB officer] gave him the options about what the future would be without doing the Junior Cert. It was his decision to go back in the end." It wasn't a sudden transformation. Every now and then there was a fresh bucket of cold water to remind him how far he had to go, she says. But he eventually completed his exams, started working and now wants to join the Army.
"I'm delighted because it means he has a future. As a mother you always want the best for your child. At least now he's heading in the right direction."
Names in case studies have been changed for reasons of privacy