Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

A key focus of the Government's education policy is to prioritise investment in favour of those most at risk and to optimise access, participation and outcomes at every level of the system for disadvantaged groups.

Almost €650 million is being provided in 2006 for a wide variety of measures to tackle educational disadvantage at all levels and for all ages, from pre-school through the formal school system, in the youth work sector and in second-chance education. Our interventions are guided by four key principles, those of early intervention, effective targeting, partnership and second-chance opportunities.

The new action plan for educational inclusion, the DEIS programme, which was launched last May, includes a commitment to pre-school education for children who will be attending the most disadvantaged primary schools. The programme also has a major focus on tackling literacy and numeracy problems as early as possible before they become ingrained. It is vital to intervene at an early point to stop children falling behind, and we are doing this.

Over the past 15 years, a number of different schemes to tackle educational disadvantage have been put in place by different Ministers. Approximately eight separate initiatives were introduced for primary schools, addressing a number of different aspects of educational disadvantage. These included schemes providing additional teaching posts and reduced class sizes, a scheme for improving home-school links, a scheme for encouraging better school completion rates and a pilot reading recovery programme. Some schools were participating in just one or two schemes, while others were participating in more.

I am determined to ensure that the most disadvantaged schools in the country benefit from every support available. Therefore, the schools that have been identified, through a process managed by the Educational Research Centre, for inclusion in the DEIS programme will get a comprehensive package of supports in line with their level of disadvantage.

Other schools that are benefiting from previous schemes will hold the extra supports that they are receiving for the 2006-07 school year and will be kept under review thereafter to ensure efficiency. The key is to ensure that schools get a level of support that is in line with the proportion of their student body from disadvantaged backgrounds and that extra investment is targeted at those who need it most. It is also vital to ensure that increased resources lead to better outcomes for children. To that end, the DEIS initiative includes a strong focus on planning and monitoring the success of the various supports.

Of course, the family has an enormous influence on whether any initiative is successful in enabling young people to make the most of the opportunities available to them. Schools have far more success with all children, but particularly with those from disadvantaged areas, when parents are supportive of, and involved in, their child's education. In this context, programmes such as the home-school-community liaison scheme and family literacy projects are of immense value and that is why these will be a major part of the DEIS programme.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House.

Partnership between my Department and other Departments and agencies is extremely important and will also be a key feature of DEIS.

No matter how successful initiatives aimed at improving the outcomes for children from disadvantaged areas in our formal school system are, there will always be a need to provide second-chance opportunities. These are needed for those who did not get the benefit of a full education in the past and could benefit from adult literacy, workplace training and other education programmes for adults and for young people who might opt out of education altogether if it were not for initiatives such as Youthreach or FÁS apprenticeships. Hence, the Government focus on these sectors in recent years.

The Government has a multi-faceted strategy in place to tackle socio-economic disadvantage at every level of our education system. As well as education initiatives to tackle socio-economic disadvantage, special programmes are also in place to enable groups such as Travellers, people with special educational needs and those whose first language is not English to derive maximum benefit from our education system.

See this speech in context