Ms Gr?inne Cullen:

The OECD review is actually broader than DEIS, in fact. What we are trying to look at is how we support children at risk of education disadvantage in all schools. We know there are children in all schools that struggle. It is quite a wide look at the funding resources that we are putting in, as well as at how we are using that funding. We are also looking at the programmes themselves, like the HSCL and the school completion programme, which work very closely together. What is very challenging with the HSCL at the moment is that, as it is currently defined, the liaison person must be a teacher - on secondment for five years - but as members are probably aware, we have a teacher supply issue at the moment. One of the challenges in the consultation work we are doing is determining the features of the HSCL programme that really work and whether there are ways to bring together the services that we have on the ground in a better way, that makes really good use of those resources to support the children. The Star project, which is also being evaluated currently, is looking at what training people need, whether they are working on home school liaison or on school completion, to have the confidence to go out to sites and into homes because that is huge and is very different for teachers. The other aspect is that sometimes parents do not want to come to meetings that are held in the school because they never want to cross the door of a school again. It is about trying to inform all of the practice around the issues and that is what we are delving into right now.

I can talk a little more about the different funding streams if members are interested.