Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter, which I am taking on behalf of the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh. I am delighted he has been appointed to that office. I take this opportunity in Dáil Éireann to wish him the very best.

I was a school principal for 31 years and I understand what Deputy Pearse Doherty is saying. I have taught thousands of children and in my ministerial role I always put the child at the epicentre of any agenda I have. Therefore, I hear what he is saying.

As the Deputy will be aware, Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools is the main policy initiative of the Government to address educational disadvantage at school level. The DEIS plan 2017 sets out the vision for future interventions in the critical area of educational disadvantage policy and builds on what has already been achieved by schools which have benefited from the additional supports available under the initial DEIS programme introduced in 2005. The DEIS plan 2017 is based on the findings of an extensive review of the DEIS programme, which involved consultations with all relevant stakeholders.

There are two key elements to the 2017 pIan. The first is the development of a new identification process for the assessment of schools in terms of the socio-economic background of their pupil cohort using centrally held data, including the Department of Education and Skills primary and post-primary online databases and the Central Statistics Office, CSO, small area of population statistics from the national census of population 2011, as represented by the Pobal HP deprivation index. The second is the updating of the DEIS school programme, which represents the overall package of supports available to schools participating in the programme to improve educational outcomes for pupils at greatest risk of not reaching their full potential by virtue of their socio-economic circumstances.

As of September 2017 following the application of the new identification process, 79 additional schools were designated as DEIS and 30 urban post-primary schools were upgraded from DEIS band 2 to DEIS band 1. These were schools that were identified as having the highest levels of concentrated disadvantage.

The DEIS plan 2017 states that the improved data on the socio-demographic of schools resulting from the new identification model will have an impact not only on the assessment of schools for inclusion in the programme, but also on the scaling of resources to allow for more graduated levels of support. This is turn allows for the ultimate objective of allocating resources to best meet the identified need of individual schools.

Work is continuing on the implementation of the various actions under the DEIS plan 2017, with a focus on targeting extra resources as closely as possible at those students with the greatest level of need. Work has also commenced on identifying such interventions that are having the greatest impact on tackling educational disadvantage. This will involve testing new approaches in groups of schools and working closely with schools in school self-evaluation and planning improvements.

We need to ensure the current identification model is as accurate as possible and this requires the use of Eircode to ensure correct inputting of addresses. Further analysis is also required to examine other variables known to be strong predictors of educational disadvantage in the context of resource allocation. To ensure the quality of the address data and conduct further analysis, the Department has decided to conduct additional quality assurance on the model before extending these envisaged uses of the model. It is not intended to extend the DEIS programme to any further schools until this work is complete.

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