Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue and apologise on behalf of the Minister who cannot be present. I discussed the issue with him earlier and he is very much aware of it from the correspondence he has received from the Deputy. He is sorry he cannot be present, but I will make sure to convey to him the additional information provided by the Deputy.

DEIS is the main policy initiative of the Department of Education and Skills to address educational disadvantage at school level. DEIS Plan 2017 published in February last year introduced a more robust and responsive framework for assessing levels of disadvantage in schools and set out details of an updated DEIS school support programme. The DEIS identification process uses data from the following sources: Central Statistics Office small area population statistics, as represented in the Pobal small area HP deprivation index, combined with centrally held data from the Department's primary and post-primary online databases as provided by schools. This new approach removes the administrative burden on schools to provide socioeconomic data for their pupil cohorts and ensures consistency and uniformity in the assessment process for all primary and post-primary schools. The system is also responsive to demographic changes in schools, with the capacity to update school data on an annual basis from the school annual census returns and socioeconomic data every five years following the CSO national census of population. This development was strongly called for by stakeholders during the review of the DEIS programme undertaken by the Department in which I was involved at the time.

The initial application of the model assessed all schools and found that most schools had pupils from disadvantaged areas but that the concentration of disadvantage varied significantly. It is important to note that the Department's assessment is not based on the location of the school but on the CSO small areas statistics from which a school derives its pupil cohort. Accordingly, the demographics of neighbouring schools can differ in terms of assessed levels of need which are based on the pupil cohort within each school. Following the initial application of the identification process, 79 additional schools were brought into the programme, while a further 30 existing DEIS schools were identified for increased levels of support with effect from September 2017. An updating of the identification model is under way and will take account of data provided by schools for the current school year, combined with the Pobal HP index of deprivation, based on census 2016. It is envisaged that the process will be completed by the end of quarter 1 this year, or in a month's time. If the exercise reveals that any school meets the criteria applicable to schools with the highest concentrations of disadvantage, it may be included, subject to available resources. It is also important to note that all schools, including the Convent of Mercy, Belturbet, have available to them a range of supports provided by the Department to meet the identified additional educational needs of their pupil cohorts. They include additional teaching and other resources to meet special educational needs, language and behavioural supports and educational psychological supports. Further services provided by the Professional Development Service for Teachers are also available to support teachers and school leaders in the delivery of teaching and learning in schools.

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