Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I was very pleased yesterday to be able to announce a major expansion of the DEIS programme. For the first time, we are now seeing a considerable expansion of the programme, which will mean that a significant number of schools will benefit from the €32 million investment. In fact, it will mean that 310 schools will be provided for in the DEIS programme, which will mean that 25% of our schools are part of the programme, facilitating almost 250,000 or one in four students.

Currently, 884 schools and more than 180,000 students benefit from the DEIS programme. As I said, the additions are significant in terms of moving that forward. Supports will be provided to these schools, including a DEIS grant and additional schoolbook grant funding, access to the home school community liaison scheme, access to the school completion programme and priority access to continuous professional development for teachers.

Schools have been identified for inclusion in the programme, and this is important, through the refined DEIS identification model, which is an objective, statistics-based model. This model uses information from the Department of Education enrolment databases and the Pobal HP deprivation index. Schools were not required to apply for inclusion in the DEIS programme and the model has been applied fairly and equally to all schools.

The extension of the DEIS programme to additional schools follows intensive work by the DEIS technical group, which involved valuable input from stakeholders. The refined DEIS identification model builds on the objectivity and fairness of the 2017 version, but now captures a greater breadth of disadvantage and accounts for severity of disadvantage through the application of a weighted process.

It also takes consideration of the significant educational disadvantage experienced by Traveller and Roma learners and students residing in direct provision or emergency homeless accommodation. Using this approach, we can extend the additional targeted supports of the DEIS programme to those schools serving high concentrations of students at risk of educational disadvantage.

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