Brendan Ryan (Dublin North, Labour)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity to raise this matter. The Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, DEIS, scheme, launched in 2005, is a positive scheme aimed at tackling educational disadvantage. Its purpose is to address and prioritise the needs of children and young people from disadvantaged communities, from pre-school through to second level education, and to provide a standardised system for determining the levels of disadvantage and an integrated school support programme to respond to it.

The action plan for DEIS schools is grounded in the belief that every child and young person deserves an equal chance to access, participate in, and benefit from education, and that each person should have the opportunity to reach her or his full educational potential for personal, social and economic reasons. Unfortunately, we are not able to deliver fully the opportunity for every disadvantaged child to reach his or her full potential as there is currently no capacity to expand the DEIS programme.

The economic climate of the past few years impacted on the DEIS scheme and caused it to remain relatively static.

DEIS schools deliver results in terms of improved attendance, retention, progression and examination attainment. As we saw last week, completion rates in disadvantaged areas rose by 14 points in seven years, to 82%. In recent weeks, we saw reports detailing improvements in vocabulary, comprehension, algebra and data analysis. More needs to be done but with DEIS, we have a framework to assist and achieve progress.

Currently there are 849 schools included in this programme. Some 657 are primary schools, 336 of which are from urban areas while 321 of which are from rural areas. There are 192 second-level schools.

By my count, there are only eight DEIS schools in north County Dublin. This is an area which has seen rapid population growth in the past ten years and which suffered a great deal in terms of unemployment when the economy crashed. We in the Labour Party worked hard to protect the DEIS scheme during this difficult period but as we emerge now into economic recovery and growth, we need to ensure the disadvantaged children are not left behind.

The DEIS scheme is ten years old. To my knowledge, the initial classifications of schools happened when the scheme began and little or no changes were made in the intervening decade. Ireland is a different place than it was in 2005 and the economic crash and its effects demands a review of the classification of some existing schools, and of new schools which have come on stream since 2005, to be considered for DEIS. Now is the time, as the economy is returning to growth, to examine whether extra resources can be delivered to these schools.

Under this Government, and due to the commitment of Labour Ministers for Education and Skills, first through the former Minister, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, and now through Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, we built new schools, replaced inadequate prefabs and engaged in extensive refurbishment works, even during the worst of the economic crash. I commend Deputies Jan O'Sullivan and Ruairí Quinn for this resolute commitment to improving existing schools and building new ones.

Over the past few years, we established new schools which should qualify to be considered for DEIS supports. It is important that schools, particularly new schools in emerging towns with a high proportion of new communities, can be considered as DEIS schools and entitled to the supports that DEIS offers.

I ask the Minister to commit to an effort to find extra capacity within the Department to classify new schools and reclassify existing schools in which there is a high level of deprivation, with a view to those schools qualifying for DEIS support. We cannot lose the progress made through the DEIS scheme over the last decade. If we are to see progress continuing to be made through the next ten years, we need to invest now.

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I thank Deputy Brendan Ryan. Given the current economic climate and the target to reduce public expenditure, prioritising and maintaining resources for children at risk of educational disadvantage is a significant challenge. As the Deputy stated, even in difficult times, both under my predecessor and in the recent budget, we protected the DEIS budget. The current focus of my Department is on maintaining existing supports for schools catering for the most concentrated levels of educational disadvantage. This means that there is no capacity for additionality to the DEIS programme.

The aim of DEIS is to ensure that the educational needs of children and young people from disadvantaged communities are prioritised and effectively addressed. An extensive identification process was conducted by the Educational Research Centre on behalf of the Department in 2005 - as the Deputy stated, a full ten years ago - to select the schools for inclusion in the DEIS programme on the basis of their relative level of disadvantage, with priority being given to the most concentrated levels of disadvantage. In the primary sector, the identification process was based on a survey carried out in May 2005, from which a response rate of more than 97% was achieved. In the case of second-level schools, the Department supplied the Educational Research Centre with centrally-held data from the post-primary pupils and State Examinations Commission databases.

The DEIS programme is the subject of ongoing evaluation by the Educational Research Centre and the inspectorate of my Department. The focus of this research is to ensure the successful implementation of DEIS and that the best possible approaches to measuring progress and outcomes at both local and national level are being used.

As Deputy Brendan Ryan stated, the research to date demonstrates encouraging results. Literacy and numeracy rates in primary schools are improving steadily, second level attainment levels are also improving and attendance, participation and retention levels are increasing. Most importantly, learning from interventions in school planning, teacher education and parental engagement which have been developed in the DEIS programme is now being used in the wider school system to improve teaching and learning outcomes in all schools. However, there remains a gap between the overall achievements of children in DEIS schools and the national average which means that supports for schools catering for the most concentrated levels of educational disadvantage must be maintained.

An overall report on the learning from DEIS is currently being prepared by the Economic and Social Research Institute. This report will incorporate information on the various inputs, processes and educational outcomes contained in the findings from the DEIS research and evaluations conducted by the Educational Research Centre and the Department's inspectorate to date. It will also review other Irish and international related research on educational disadvantage. The report will assess the main findings of the evaluations and provide advice to inform future policy direction on educational disadvantage, including DEIS. This report is currently being finalised and I expect to receive it shortly.

Accordingly, for the present, my focus and that of my Department is on taking the learning from DEIS and applying it to future policy making. This will ensure that future policy direction to tackle educational disadvantage will be evidence-based and grounded in the solid body of experience provided by the DEIS programme.

I expect the report to which I referred in the next few weeks. As the Deputy stated, we have not really been able to expand. Despite the fact that the programme is in existence for ten years, there has not been expansion. This will give us an opportunity to look at the success of DEIS and whether there should be other areas in DEIS. There is quite a lot of evidence, including the retention figures issued last week, on the success of DEIS, but it is time to re-evaluate it and to ensure that we do anything that needs to be done to change it for the better.

Brendan Ryan (Dublin North, Labour)
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I thank the Minister for her response.

We cannot underestimate the role a school plays in improving social cohesion within a community. New communities, areas of economic deprivation and emerging towns need this strength in their local schools. I am glad to hear that we are expecting a report from ESRI in the near future and on foot of that report, I hope to see some action in this area.

Society does not remain static and Government policy instruments, such as the DEIS scheme, need to evolve with the dynamic nature of society. I cannot emphasise enough the need for the Government to act at this early phase in our recovery to strengthen disadvantaged schools and help individual pupils. Intelligence, ability and potential do not know income brackets, geography or privilege. Given the right supports, we can continue to assist more children to reach the limits of their potential through school by providing the relevant supports.

The Minister mentioned the initial assessments were made in 2005. At that stage, variables involved for primary schools were the percentage unemployment, the percentage of lone parenthood, the percentage of Travellers, the percentage of large families, that is, five or more children, the percentage of eligibility for free books and the percentage in local authority accommodation. The latter figure for the percentage in local authority accommodation might now also include the percentage on rent supplement because that has changed dramatically in the past ten years. A consideration today might be given to the percentage of non-English speaking pupils or parents in communities, particularly in the north and west Dublin areas, which is a big problem.

The Minister stated that her priority is to maintain existing supports as there is no added capacity at this time and to focus on the most concentrated areas, but I believe there are new schools which, if there were an evaluation based on those criteria, would meet the criteria and should be included in DEIS. Hopefully, the report to which she refers might lead to a wider look at this and determine whether there are gaps that need to be addressed - I believe there are. Now is the time to take a fresh look at it and I look forward to seeing progress on this matter in the near future.

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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This report will certainly give us an opportunity to look at the whole programme, including whether there are areas left out.

The allocation from my budget for 2014 was €96.5 million. There is also €26 million for the school completion programme, which comes from the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and €36.7 million comes for the school meals programme from the Department of Social Protection. It is a considerable amount.

Deputy Ryan makes a fair point that after ten years, certain other criteria would certainly be worthy of consideration because of what has changed in the meantime.