Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

On the Deputy's specific question about the pilot schools, 47 schools will take part. A total of 28 primary and 19 post-primary schools have agreed to participate in the pilot project. They were initially selected by the Educational Research Centre and efforts were made to include schools of different sizes, different levels of disadvantage and gender differences. One of the commitments given to the schools was that if they participated in the pilot project they would not lose resources during the pilot phase. That was a practical way of ensuring that schools of different types would be willing to participate in the pilot project. We did not want them to lose resources because they were participating in a pilot study from which we wanted to learn. That was why we gave that commitment to them.

On the new scheme more generally, it has been identified that the current scheme is inequitable and that we need to move to a new scheme. However, we did not have the information we required on complex needs in order to be able to implement a new scheme fully. That is why we are conducting the pilot and why we want to learn from it.

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