Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On 1 January 2021, responsibility for education welfare functions, including the administration of the home school community liaison scheme and the school completion programme, SCP, transferred from the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to me. The SCP forms part of the Tusla education support service, TESS. While the arrangements between Tusla and the SCP are not impacted by the change in ministerial responsibility, Tusla now reports to my Department in respect of the SCP, which is funded by my Department via Tusla.

TESS has three strands. These are the statutory educational welfare service, EWS, and the two school support services, namely, the home school community liaison, HSCL, scheme and the SCP. The three TESS strands work together collaboratively with schools, families and other relevant services to achieve the best educational outcomes for children and young people.

The SCP was introduced in 2002 by my Department and the programme is now a central element of Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, DEIS, my Department’s main policy initiative to address educational disadvantage at school level. The SCP delivers a range of local interventions in disadvantaged communities that support the retention of young people in education. The programme enables local communities to develop tailored strategies to maximise the participation levels of those at risk of early school-leaving in the education process. It entails targeting individual young people of school-going age, both in and out of school, and arranging supports to address inequalities in education access, participation and outcomes.

There are currently 122 school completion projects with local management committees. The 2022 allocation for the programme is €26.9 million and additional funding will be provided later this year to allow new DEIS urban primary and post-primary schools to access the SCP service. At present, management of the school completion programme initiatives, including the employment of staff, occurs at local level.

Since I took over responsibility for the school completion programme in January 2021, I have secured additional funding to provide for an extension of SCP supports to 28 additional schools that were included in DEIS for the first time in September 2017 and a 5% overall increase in funding for the school completion programme, effective from September 2021. In addition, I negotiated a further increase of 5% for the SCP under budget 2023.

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