Jerry Cowley (Mayo, Independent)

I thank the Minister for her reply but she has engineered a crisis in Mayo. Schools are distressed because of a situation which is equivalent to losing a teacher. Class sizes will have to be increased and she has increased divisiveness and discrimination in Mayo. I asked specifically about the situation on Achill Island, a deprived area in which there are 13 schools, some 11 of which are feeder schools. They are all in DEIS and recognised as such by the Department. However, of the two that accept children from the national school, only one is in DEIS. The two schools are only separated by a wall but one receives an additional €30,000 funding. In that school, the pupils must achieve greater marks than the deprived children to reach third level. Does deprivation stop at that wall? How does this happen? I do not understand how one of two schools that are right beside each other is not in the programme while the other is, particularly when every second child that goes to these schools is classified as deprived. A similar situation exists in Erris. There are 22 feeder schools to two second level schools and one of them has been left out of the programme. It does not make sense.

This process was based on a flawed system that penalises schools that have done well and retained children. The schools would do better to expel all of their children. The criteria for the system are out of date and do not reflect the last three to five years when we were swamped with students who speak English as a second language.

The Minister's own list refers to the transferring from primary to second level, stating that the key principle of early intervention, to identify and help children at risk of leaving school early, is a major component of DEIS, with a continuing emphasis being placed on the development of effective transfer programmes for pupils making the transition to second level by building on the existing work of the HSCL scheme and the school completion programme. The Minister is not even following her own criterion. Surely the transition means that those children who are deprived at primary level are deprived at second level too. This does not make sense and I ask the Minister to rationalise it.

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