Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

During my time as Minister for Education I have shown a strong commitment to addressing educational disadvantage. The Department’s statement of strategy sets out the vision and mission of the Department for an educational system where every child and young person feels valued and is actively supported and nurtured to reach his or her fullest potential. It sets equity of opportunity in education as a goal and equality and inclusivity as fundamental principles. Successful delivery of this goal means that our school system will be open and welcoming for all students and that learners at risk of educational disadvantage in particular will be supported to achieve their fullest potential.

As recently as January of this year, the Department published the latest in a series of reports on retention to leaving certificate level. The latest report measures the percentage of pupils who entered the first year of post-primary school in 2015 and who sat the leaving certificate examination in 2020 or 2021. Some of these were provided with calculated grades in 2020 due to Covid, as the Deputy will appreciate.

The latest report is the 14th publication in a series of reports which cover a total of 24 years, beginning with the 1991 post-primary entry cohort of students. These reports build a continuous time series recording retention rate trends in post-primary schools over the last two to three decades. All the reports containing the information requested by the Deputy are available on the Department’s website. The latest report shows that 92.1% of the students who entered first year in 2015 received either a calculated grade in 2020 or sat the leaving certificate examination in 2020 or 2021. The report shows that 97.5% sat the junior certificate examination in 2018 or 2019. This latest retention rate of 92.1% to leaving certificate represents an increase of 0.6% on the retention rate for the 2014 post-primary entry cohort.

A key action of my Department is continuing to address the retention gap between DEIS and non-DEIS schools through the DEIS programme. The current reports provide further evidence of progress in this area. The retention rate for schools participating in the DEIS programme increased to 86.1%, a 1.3% increase on the DEIS retention rate in the 2014 entry cohort report. The gap in retention rates between DEIS and non-DEIS schools is currently 7.6%. That is an improvement on the 2014 cohort, where the gap stood at 8.6%.

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