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

I assure the Deputy that this system was introduced following a careful review. A very detailed analysis of this was done before this system was introduced. The indicators that are being used, demographic growth, dependency ratios, education levels, single parent rate, overcrowding, social class, occupation and unemployment rates, are found to be very closely associated with educational disadvantage, which is why they were chosen. They are also the objective criteria used by the CSO in drawing up the HP deprivation index. This is a selection based on a robust analysis of how to identify schools with high concentrations of disadvantage. They have been applied uniformly in all cases.

I would be the first to acknowledge that many schools did not qualify on this occasion. Only 79 schools qualified for an uplift on this occasion and 30 had their status changed, giving 109 in total. That is out of 4,000 schools whose status we could change on this occasion. It would be my ambition over time to extend this. As I said in the reply, we are now reviewing all the schools using the new census data so that schools that might have seen a deterioration or a greater indication of deprivation will be reviewed later this year. Through that review process we continually look at schools and assess their need for support in this way.

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