Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

A significant benefit of the new identification process for the DEIS plan for 2017 lies in its capacity as a uniform system adopting common criteria and a consistent application across all primary and post-primary schools so it is a completely independent process. The key data sources are the primary online, POD, and post-primary online, PPOD, databases and CSO data from the national census of population as represented in the Pobal HP deprivation index for small areas. This data is combined with pupil data, anonymised and aggregated to small area level to provide information on the relative level of concentrated disadvantage present in the pupil cohort of individual schools.

The CSO small area population statistics used in this process are the most up-to-date available. CSO small area data based on the 2016 national census will be available on 20 July 2017 and will facilitate an update of the identification model from that data.

A further strength of the new identification process is its capacity to be regularly updated and to be responsive to significant change in pupil demographics which might impact on the level of concentrated disadvantage present in a particular school. My Department's primary and post-primary online databases are updated annually by schools and the relevant national census data is updated at five yearly intervals. In this respect, the identification process is subject to ongoing update and this is as it should be.

If any school considers that the outcome of the identification process is inaccurate, it may make an application for a review to verify the information used to assess the level of disadvantage of its pupil cohort to my Department. Information on how this can be done is available on the DEIS section of my Department's website. Verification will include a check of the school data supplied by individual schools and a check of the application of the data to ensure that no administrative error has occurred.

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