Fine Gael has announced an ambitious new programme to combat early school-leaving, including a means-tested "educational youth wage" to help in keeping 15- to 19-year-olds at school.
The party's education spokesman, Mr Richard Bruton, said yesterday that the payments to teenagers staying on at school would be modelled on those paid to participants in the Youthreach training workshops, which range from £28.75 for 15- to 16-year-olds to £70.50 for 18-year-olds and above. They would be made to the young people themselves.
He said the new scheme, which would be implemented by any future government including Fine Gael, would give real financial incentives for teenagers to stay on in education. "Many of them are currently attracted to give up education by casual earnings available from work."
Mr Bruton estimated that about 20,000 teenagers from low-income families could be eligible for the scheme, which would cost about £50 million a year.
He was critical of Government spending to combat educational disadvantage, noting that the State spent only about one-third of the amount on a secondary school "drop-out" that it spent on a graduate. This did not make sense "even in crude accounting terms", since such a drop-out would in the next 20 years go on to receive £26,000 more in social welfare payments and pay £70,000 less in tax revenue than a graduate.
At pre-school level, Fine Gael proposes a locally based assessment service for children with special needs. Such children's needs would be set out in an "individual education plan", as they were in other European countries.
Five hundred teachers would become "school advocates", with an initial annual budget of £4 million, to work with disadvantaged schools to help them to develop school plans and apply for extra resources.
The concept of "`community education campuses", schools which would provide everything from homework clubs to adult education, would be piloted.
Another pilot project would provide education credit vouchers for people who left school with Junior Certificate or less. The holders would be entitled to present the credit to an employer or training agency, who would be reimbursed by the State for providing relevant training. Mr Bruton said this scheme had been successfully pioneered in Britain and a recent Combat Poverty report had backed it.
Only 80 students from disadvantaged backgrounds gained entry to third-level education by non-Leaving Certificate routes last year, Mr Bruton said, compared to the 500 target outlined by the 1995 Education White Paper. Under Fine Gael all third-level colleges would be required to develop strategies to reach given "alternative entry" targets.
A Department of Education spokesman said his initial reaction to the school wage plan was that it "would not appear to be practical to pay young people to sit in school, or equitable to pay some students but not others".
