Keynote Presentation, FORSA National School Completion Programme Symposium, Professor Paul Downes

Professor Paul Downes, Director of the DCU Institute of Education’s Educational Disadvantage Centre, gave a keynote presentation A New Era for the National School Completion Programme: Key Steps for the Government to Address for a Post-Pandemic Strategic Response at the FORSA School Completion Programme Symposium, Celebrating 20 years of service in the School Completion Programme: Reflections on current opportunities and challenges in the Royal College of Physicians, Kildare St. Dublin, March 30, 2022. The other keynote presentations were by Professor Emer Smyth of the ESRI (Economic and Social Research Institute) and Dr. Deirdre McGillicuddy, UCD School of Education.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin and the Minister for Education and Skills Norma Foley TD spoke at the symposium, together with Kevin Callinan, General Secretary of FORSA and President of ICTU, and Micheal Smyth, President of FORSA.

Professor Downes’ keynote presentation emphasised the urgent need for a Department of Education and Skills (DES) response to the successive priority recommendations of Joint Oireachtas Education Committee reports in 2021 for specialist emotional counsellors/therapists in all primary and secondary schools. Paul highlighted a key potential role for the School Completion Programme to house such specialist emotional counsellors building on their work in this area over the past decades, while emphasising the need for these roles to be fulltime and sustained in schools and funded by the DES.

Building on his monographs published by the EU Commission, Professor Downes argued that the School Completion Programme is well situated to further evolve into multidisciplinary teams in and around schools. He also emphasised the future and historic role of the School Completion Programme in leading an arts and social inclusion in education response, building on the recently published discussion document on a National Strategy for the Arts and Social Inclusion in Education from a working group of key national stakeholders established by the Educational Disadvantage Centre, including School Completion Programme Coordinators. Research evidence recognises the importance of the arts for student empowerment, overcoming fear of failure, offering diverse opportunities for educational success and local community development. Paul also highlighted the neglect of the issue of sleep loss in national policy documents, such as the DEIS Action Plan 2017 and Better Outcomes Brighter Futures National Children’s Policy Framework. Sleep loss, exacerbated by the pandemic lockdowns, is another key area for future work of the School Completion Programme to support students’ engagement and retention in education.