Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Department provides a wide range of supports to all schools, both DEIS and non-DEIS, to support the inclusion of all students and address barriers to students achieving their potential. Supplementing these universal supports, the DEIS programme provides a targeted, equitable way to address concentrated educational disadvantage that promotes equity and has benefits for students.

As part of budget 2023, I secured more than€8 million to specifically enhance school attendance, participation, and retention. I had previously allocated a 5% increase in funding for the school completion programme, and in September I announced that the remaining balance of over €6 million would be committed to an attendance campaign support grant for all schools, with a higher allocation target at DEIS schools, recognising the more concentrated level of disadvantage in these schools. Schools will receive this grant this week. It will enable all schools to develop and implement targeted interventions to improve attendance and is designed to support and augment the school attendance campaign which is running through this school year. Guidance is also being issued to schools to provide advice on using available data to target supports and to provide schools with examples of good practice and initiatives that have been successful in the past.

I am also pleased that in budget 2024, additional funding of €5 million is being provided for social inclusion measures, including additional educational welfare officer posts. It will also provide supports for the alternative education assessment and registration service for its work on the provision of education in places other than recognised schools, including home schooling and independent schools. A further €2 million is being made available for increasing services in school retention and completion programmes and supports targeted at the most educationally disadvantaged children. Recent engagement between my officials and some principals of schools in areas of disadvantage will help to inform the targeting of these resources. I met many of these principals myself.

The Department of Education now spends approximately €180 million annually, providing additional supports to approximately 1,200 schools in the DEIS programme. This includes an additional €32 million allocated following the announcement to extend the programme to an additional 322 schools last September. This now means that approximately 240,000 students, or one in four of all students, are now supported in the programme.

Within the DEIS programme, the highest levels of resources are targeted at those primary schools with the highest levels of concentrated educational disadvantage. Schools in this category are accorded DEIS urban band 1 status. There are currently 306 primary schools in DEIS urban band 1, including 79 primary schools that were included in the band for the first time last September as part of the extension of the programme.

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