The Junior Certificate School Programme is based on the concept that all young people are capable of real success in school and that they can have a positive experience of school if the conditions are favourable. The Programme is a national Department of Education and Science Programme within the Junior Certificate aimed at students who may leave school early.

Every year a small group of students leave school, some of them without attempting any of the State examinations. For many of these young people, their experience of school has been one of failure and alienation.

The Junior Certificate School Programme has been designed to ensure that these young people can benefit from their time in school and enjoy the experience of improvement and success. It sets out to ensure that each individual student in the Programme experiences success and progression and to make the experience of school relevant and accessible to those young people who find it difficult to cope with the school system. It does this by providing a curriculum framework which will assist schools and individual teachers in adopting a student-centred approach to the Junior Certificate specifically aimed at those young people who show signs of school failure or early leaving.

It is not an alternative to the Junior Certificate but a support framework to it. It aims to ensure that all participating students sit the same Junior Certificate examination as their peers in as many subjects as they can succeed in. Students leave school for all kinds of reasons and so the framework is flexible to meet those different needs.