Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)

I am pleased to have the opportunity to address the Deputies on behalf of the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe.

Notwithstanding the increase of €302 million in the education budget for 2009, which is a real achievement in the current economic climate, several tough and difficult decisions had to be taken in framing the 2009 budget. These decisions were taken to control expenditure and to ensure sustainability in the long term. In this respect education, while protected to a much greater extent than most other areas of public expenditure, could not be entirely spared, and I acknowledge the impact of funding restrictions several areas, including at school level. However, these are the inevitable result of the current challenging economic environment and the need to manage Exchequer resources prudently.

The DEIS plan for educational inclusion provides for a standardised system for identifying levels of disadvantage and an integrated school support programme. DEIS brings together and builds upon a number of interventions in schools with concentrated levels of disadvantage. There are 876 schools in the DEIS plan. These comprise 673 primary schools and 203 second-level schools.

The process of identifying schools for participation in DEIS was managed by the Educational Research Centre on behalf of the Department of Education and Science and supported by quality assurance work co-ordinated through the Department's regional offices and the inspectorate. Some 73 post primary schools, 27 urban primary schools and 123 rural primary schools that were not identified for inclusion in DEIS retained resources, including teaching posts and financial supports, under pre-existing schemes and programmes for addressing educational disadvantage.

When DEIS was introduced, a commitment was given, as a concessionary measure to these schools, that they would retain a level of support for the duration of the current DEIS initiative which is scheduled to end in 2010. While it is appreciated that the discontinuation of these resources will impact on these schools, given the current challenging economic climate, the Department considered that it was prudent to advance the withdrawal of such supports from non-DEIS schools to the beginning of the next school year.

The main focus of social inclusion measures will be to retain resources in DEIS schools. There is a need to target resources on the schools in most need and this approach is in line with the broad thrust of the recommendations of the Comptroller and Auditor General, set out in his report on primary disadvantage of 2006, which recommended that the Department should focus its educational disadvantage measures on those schools serving the most disadvantaged communities.

Taken in combination, the impact of the staffing schedule changes, as well as the withdrawal of historic DEIS posts and language support, weighed off against increases expected in the numbers of teachers for demographics and resource teachers for special needs, will mean an overall net reduction of 200 posts at primary and post primary levels.

As the processing of the September 2008 enrolment returns for primary and post-primary schools is not yet finalised, it is not possible at this time to outline to the House the impact these changes will have on the allocation of mainstream teaching posts for the school year 2009-10. This includes Mercy College, Woodford. The Department will be advising individual schools in the normal way on staffing allocations for the school year 2009-10 and at that time, a more accurate indication of the mainstream staffing levels will be available.

The allocation processes include appellate mechanisms under which schools can appeal against the allocation due to them under the staffing schedules. This is particularly relevant at post-primary level where the appellate process especially considers any specific curricular needs of the school concerned. At primary level, the normal redeployment arrangements apply. However, at post-primary there is no effective system-wide redeployment scheme at present and this can mean that schools retain teachers, though over quota. I remind the Deputies that the ceiling of two on the number of language support teachers per school is being re-imposed, with some alleviation for the position of those schools where there is sufficient concentration of newcomer pupils as a proportion of the overall pupil enrolment.

I again thank the Deputies for providing me with the opportunity to address the House on this matter and to outline the current position here.

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