For the pupils and teachers at St Vincent's Boys’ Infant School in Dublin, a change is under way.
Where once the school struggled with high absentee levels, particularly on Mondays and Fridays, attendance rates are now rising, with the boys reporting feeling happier coming to school.
It is a change that School Principal Caoimhe Sheehan puts down to the introduction of a pilot project called City Connects.
The initiative uses a range of tailored activities, both in schools and out in the community, to help support children living in disadvantaged areas.
Ms Sheehan said: "The boys are coming to school every day so excited about the different activities they can access.
"We have capoeira (mixed martial arts), gymnastics, athletics, football. Since the activities have been brought in, the absentee levels have dropped. It has been absolutely incredible."
City Connects was first established more than 20 years ago by Boston College in the US. Its aim is to "address the out-of-school factors impeding students' academic success".
More recent studies carried out by Boston College show pupils enrolled in the US programme "outperform their peers on measures of academic achievement, other measures of success, and enhanced life chances and opportunities".
Here in Ireland, City Connects is being trialled in ten schools in Dublin’s north east inner city.
The programme begins with a comprehensive interest survey carried out on each and every pupil.
This helps the City Connects coordinators determine which activities are needed where. Martin Shovelin is one of six such coordinators and stresses the importance of community engagement in the programme.
He said: "Activities and private classes such as boxing and drama may already exist within a local area, but a lot of these kids’ parents may not know about them, or be able to afford them.
"But now, we can facilitate the roll-out of these facilities in schools and hopefully overcome those barriers so that they have a level playing field."
The City Connects programme can also identify gaps within communities, as Mr Shovelin explained.
"Lego was enormously popular across the ten schools, but there was no facility for the kids to do Lego (outside of class). We managed to secure funding and now there are a couple of Lego hubs running after schools," he said.
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The Department of Education has allocated €1.4 million to the City Connects programme this year.
It said a review of the current pilot is under way, so no formal results or conclusions can yet be determined.
However, it said: "We are continuing to examine how the model of intervention in the north east inner city could be extended to other comparative areas experiencing disadvantage.
"Ongoing research, evaluation and monitoring of the NEIC City Connects pilot will inform further policy developments in this area."
