John Moloney (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputies for their contributions. I am taking this Adjournment matter on behalf of my colleague, the Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, Deputy Seán Haughey.

DEIS, the action plan for educational inclusion, provides for a standardised system for identifying levels of disadvantage and a new integrated school support programme, SSP. DEIS brings together and builds upon a number of existing interventions in schools with concentrated levels of disadvantage. The process of identifying schools for participation in DEIS was managed by the Educational Research Centre on behalf of the Department and supported by quality assurance work co-ordinated through the Department's regional offices and the inspectorate. There are 876 schools in DEIS, comprising 673 primary schools — 199 urban band 1, 141 urban band 2 and 333 rural — and 203 second level schools.

Rural schools participating in the DEIS scheme have access to a rural co-ordinator serving a cluster of schools whose general functions include the development of home school community liaison, supporting the implementation of literacy and numeracy measures and planning supports. Some rural DEIS schools receive financial support as an alternative to rural co-ordinator services where the schools cannot be clustered.

The schools to which the Deputies refer were selected for inclusion under the rural element of DEIS. In the past, these schools were part of rural clusters which also comprised schools that were not included in DEIS but retained resources, including a rural co-ordinator service, under pre-existing schemes and programmes for addressing educational disadvantage.

When DEIS was introduced a commitment was given, as a concessionary measure to these non-DEIS schools, that they would retain a level of support for the duration of the current DEIS initiative which is scheduled to end in 2010. Owing to the current challenging economic climate, such supports are being withdrawn from non-DEIS schools from the beginning of the next school year. As a result, it has been necessary to recluster some DEIS schools which have to date been clustered with non-DEIS schools. As part of this process, all possibilities were explored to cluster schools, taking into account the size and level of disadvantage of schools, geographical location, the proximity of schools to each other and the overall resources available for this purpose.

It was not possible to include the schools referred to by the Deputy in a rural cluster. As a consequence, these schools will receive additional financial support from the Department in lieu of the rural co-ordinator service from the 2009-10 school year and will continue to receive the full range of supports provided to rural primary schools under DEIS.

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