Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I appreciate her taking the time to raise the question. Budget 2022, as the Deputy is aware, has provided for an allocation of €18 million for 2022 and €32 million for 2023 to extend the DEIS programme to further schools with the highest levels of disadvantage. This represents an increase of over 20% in funding for the DEIS programme and will enable an expansion in 2022 of the programme to further schools.

This year the Department will spend in the region of €150 million on providing supports for schools in the DEIS programme. The programme supports 884 schools and more than 180,000 learners. The Department's investment includes providing for in excess of 400 home school community liaison co-ordinators, in the region of €16 million in DEIS grants, additional posts for DEIS band 1 primary schools, curriculum supports, enhanced book grants, and access to the school completion programme. This year's package follows an extensive body of work that has been undertaken by the DEIS technical group on the development of a model to identify the concentrated levels of disadvantage of schools.

This work involved an initial process of consultation between the Department and the education partners on the technical aspects of the model. The purpose of the consultation is to ensure that, as far as possible, the refined DEIS identification model can provide an objective and independent means of identifying schools serving high concentrations of pupils at risk of educational disadvantage and to ensure there is a full understanding of the refined model and its potential application.

Under DEIS plan 2017, the DEIS identification process is based on an objective statistics-based model to determine which schools merit inclusion in the programme. An extensive body of work has been undertaken by the DEIS technical group on developing the defined model. The key data sources used in the DEIS identification process are the Department of Education primary online database, the post-primary online databases and Central Statistics Office, CSO, data from the national census of population as represented in the Pobal HP deprivation index for small areas, which is a method of measuring the relative affluence or disadvantage of a particular geographical area.

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