Almost a fifth of primary schools do not offer the Stay Safe programme that aims to protect children from abuse, figures from the Department of Education have revealed.
Nearly every primary school in the State has received in-service training in the programme, but some 15 to 20 per cent have opted out of teaching it.
The classroom-taught programme, which can be used with children from senior infants to sixth class, aims to reduce children's vulnerability to abuse by giving them skills to recognise and resist abuse or victimisation.
Lessons deal with safe and unsafe situations, bullying, touches, secrets, telling and strangers. Children are taught to always tell a trusted adult of any situation they find unsafe, threatening, dangerous or abusive.
Schools, even those which have taken term-time to participate in in-service training, are not obliged to deliver the programme. Schools that do teach Stay Safe usually give parents the choice of removing their child from the lessons.
Speaking in the Dáil recently, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin said the implementation of the Stay Safe programme for all children was a priority for her department. "I would strongly encourage all schools to use the Stay Safe programme."
However she said she did not have any plans to introduce it as a stand-alone subject on the primary curriculum.
Fine Gael education spokeswoman Olwyn Enright said the programme should become a compulsory subject.
"It is not acceptable that up to one in five primary schools are not offering Stay Safe. I believe that this programme should be mandatory in all primary schools to ensure that every child at primary school level would have the opportunity to take part before moving on to secondary school."
She said the choice of whether a child is taught the programme should be left to the individual parents and not the school, particularly when schools are funded through the Department of Education and given in-service training to implement the programme.
"Primary schools are in receipt of State funding, and if the Minister really believes that Stay Safe should be offered in all schools then she should make the programme mandatory for the next school year."
