Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies Murphy, Donnelly and McAuliffe for bringing this important issue to the fore.

The Government is committed to supporting all children and young people to achieve their potential through education and address the barrier of educational disadvantage. In government, the Minister, Deputy Foley, has secured approximately €170 million in funding to provide free school books as a universal support to all primary and post-primary schools in the free education scheme. Since 2020, the Minister has provided three improvements to the teacher allocation schedule to allow for smaller class sizes in primary schools. Supplementing universal supports such as these and the delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS, programme is a key policy initiative of the Department of Education to address concentrated educational disadvantage at school level. All of the Deputies highlighted specific areas and schools where those challenges lie. In 2022, the Minister secured an additional €32 million to extend the programme, meaning almost 1,200 new schools and approximately 240,000 students, or one in four of all students, are now supported in the DEIS programme. The Department of Education now spends over €180 million annually providing additional supports to just under 1,200 schools in the DEIS programme. This funding includes an increased level of support for 306 DEIS urban band 1 schools, those with the highest levels of educational disadvantage. DEIS urban band 1 schools receive access to a more preferable staffing allocation than other schools, meaning that children have more contact time with their teachers. DEIS urban band 1 schools also have access to the support of home school community liaison coordinators, access to the school completion programme, and receive additional funding by way of a DEIS grant. The National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, provides priority access to their services for schools in this DEIS band. School leaders and teachers in these schools also receive priority access to professional learning through Oide, in order to support them to meet the needs of their pupils.

The Minister, Deputy Foley, and her Department are aware of the proposal referred to by the Deputies and have met a selection of the principals of the schools involved. The Minister recognises that even more work is required to ensure all children, regardless of background, have the opportunity to achieve their potential in education.

To support this work, the Minister, Deputy Foley, invited the OECD Education for Inclusive Societies project to review the current policy approach for the allocation of resources to support students at risk of educational disadvantage in Ireland. This review, published in July this year, found that while Ireland has a comparatively equitable education system, and the DEIS programme is a key instrument in that, gaps remain in relation to the outcomes for children from areas of high deprivation. This bears out what the Deputies have been saying. The Department of Education has been engaging with principals, teachers and school communities in recent months to ensure future policy is informed by the needs of children and young people, and those who work with them. It is currently working with other Departments, agencies and stakeholders across the education sector to develop the recommendations set out in the OECD report into tangible actions, including some that may be implemented in the short term, to support children and young people experiencing disadvantage.

I will come back in later with a supplementary response to the Deputies. The OECD review certainly bears out what the Deputies have said with regard to particular disadvantage, very complex needs and the challenging family situations that many children and young people find themselves in. While the Government is considering this, it is perhaps a matter for the next Government to take on board. Nonetheless, it is a very important area. The work that has been done by the Minister with this OECD review will help to better inform how we provide the additional resources that are required.

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