Thank you for facilitating me this evening.
Most people will be aware that a recent report of the National Economic and Social Forum involving a study of early school leavers highlighted a startling figure of some 3,200 children who leave school annually without any qualification.That figure was broken down to demonstrate another frightening fact, that approximately 1,000 children drop out of school even before reaching second level. That report also confirmed what we had suspected for a long time, that each early school leaver represents a potential addition to the live register. There are sufficient figures to demonstrate that 46 per cent of 15 to 24 year olds are unemployed, something with which not many will be familiar. Unfortunately they are likely to remain unemployed because of their low educational achievement.
These statistics come as no surprise to those of us who work in marginalised, inner city communities, in places such as Tallaght out of which my party colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, operates or our party Leader, Deputy De Rossa who operates out of the Finglas area. Those of us who are elected to represent the inner city and other marginalised communities know where the jobless blackspots are. In one large inner city community in my constituency of Dublin South Central as many as 55 per cent of adults left school before reaching the age of 15. In housing estates adjoining the inner city the figure is 40 per cent. A recent survey of primary schools in the south-west inner city of Dublin found that 34 per cent of pupils in education need remedial teaching and 5 per cent do not attend school regularly.
At a time of unprecedented job creation we must focus resources on education to ensure our young people are equipped with the skills they need to take up those jobs. Programmes designed specifically for early school leavers such as Youthreach have an important role and I congratulate the staff and students engaged in Youthreach projects. We must take preventative action by ensuring children stay in school for as long as possible. I applaud proposals to raise the school leaving age from 15 years to 16 years.
As well as increasing the school leaving age, however, we must ensure attendance in school is rigorously enforced, which is not the case at present. We must devise a system whereby the Department of Education can track pupils and intervene before they join the early school-leaver statistics. That would be best achieved by obliging school principals at primary level to report on the destination of every pupil who leaves the school and notify the Department of Education or FÁS of any drop out or suspected drop out within three weeks of the student disappearing from class.
This is one of the issues which I hope will be addressed in the proposed legislation. I urge the Minister to bring forward this legislation as quickly as possible to reverse the present trend where an increasing number of people find themselves marginalised and long-term unemployed, with no hope of a job in the future.