Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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20. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the details of the new DEIS plan, including the resources to be provided for the implementation of the new plan. [10504/17]

Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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DEIS funding has been cut by almost €20 million from €193 million in 2008 to €174 million in 2015. Schools are trying to do more with less money. They are trying to give their students adequate supports in terms of encouraging them to complete their schooling and progress to third level. It is a massive issue. Could the Minister give me the details of the resources that will provided under this plan?

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The new DEIS plan for 2017 sets out our vision for future intervention in the critical area of social inclusion in education policy. The overall aim of the DEIS plan for 2017 is to build on the experiences of existing DEIS schools to inform how the education system can help in breaking down cycles of disadvantage through improved identification of schools and allocation of resources to support pupils most at risk. It sets out new targets to improve literacy and numeracy, school completion rates and progression to further and higher education. The plan also has a particular focus on identifying and embedding good practice through the development of pilot projects supported by a school excellence fund, and on encouraging better inter-agency working in and around DEIS schools.

To support the implementation of the actions contained in the plan, I have secured additional funding resources of €5 million under budget 2017 which amounts to €15 million in a full year, bringing the overall DEIS budget from the education sector to €112 million - Deputy Nolan quoted the DCYA and Department of Social Protection funding in her larger figure. In addition, DEIS schools have access to the home school community liaison service and the school completion programme under the Department of Children and Youth Affairs and the school meals programme operated by the Department of Social Protection. The Deputy will have read that they have also increased their budget to provide more from the Department of Social Protection.

A key element of the DEIS plan is the availability of a new identification process for the assessment of schools for inclusion in DEIS using centrally held CSO and DES data. As noted in the DEIS plan, the implementation of a new objective central data-based model of identifying levels of disadvantage within school populations will be followed by a further programme of work to create a more dynamic model for resource allocation where levels of resource more accurately follow the levels of need identified by the identification process.

The DEIS plan also provides for the establishment of a unit in my Department to facilitate the operation of pilots to promote the clustering of schools to develop innovative practice and for the development of a monitoring and evaluation framework to ensure effective evaluation of resource inputs and educational outcomes to provide feedback to schools and inform future policy.

Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister for his response. It is disappointing in terms of the continually growing numbers of children from disadvantaged households. The European Anti-Poverty Network shows that the level of children in consistent poverty in Ireland rose from 6.3% in 2008 to 11.5% in 2015.

Does the Minister intend to make provision in this year's budget for the full restoration of DEIS funding per capita? Can he indicate the allocation DEIS for the period up to budget 2018? Will the Minister consider the re-establishment of the rural co-ordination service?

There is little mention of the school completion programme. I would like more detail, both in that regard and in terms of the supports the Minister will put in there.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy will see from the reply that I have provided an increase with €15 million going into the budget, bringing it to €112 million. When one adds to that the home school community liaison service and the school completion programme, which are run through the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, and the increased allocation to the Department of Social Protection, we are increasing funding on all fronts.

The Deputy will be aware of what I did initially. There are 79 new schools coming in for the first time ever and 30 schools are being upgraded from urban band two to urban band one. That will give them access to a greater range of resources. An urban band one school, as the Deputy will be aware, has a lower pupil-teacher ratio. Therefore, those schools - there are 45 of them in total - will get a lower pupil-teacher ratio. They are among the schools that have been identified as the most disadvantaged which were not properly evaluated historically. The old way, which depended on principals gathering information, was arbitrary and some schools completely missed out. Now, without any application, we are identifying the schools of greatest need and we are putting resources into them. This is a genuine effort to ensure that the resource is following the need. We will work with all the partners to refine this process as we go forward but there were glaring examples of 79 schools that deserved support and which we can start to provide from September.

Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Many cuts were made, including cuts to the guidance counsellor service which, I am sure the Minister will agree, were significant and harsh. I understand the Minister has provided for additional counsellors in the schools, but will he commit to guidance counselling in the ratio of one to 500 pupils for DEIS post-primary schools because the cut in that resource impacted on students? It is a valuable resource and the cut impacted on students' progression to third level. It even impacted on them completing their education at second level.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I need not tell the House that the country faced a crisis of enormous proportions which resulted in cuts in expenditure. The country was close to bankruptcy. As the Deputy saw in the statistics last week, 65,000 extra people are back at work in the past 12 months alone. That results in €1 billion extra for the State to invest in services and that is what we are doing. I got €450 million to put into education and I have tried to allocate that to the greatest needs.

I ensured that we will restore guidance counselling and I insisted that would be in DEIS schools. They will certainly get the DEIS resources. I will seek to invest the funding available to ensure the best impact, particularly for children coming with either special needs or disadvantage in the education system. That is the approach I am taking.

These changes are designed to ensure that the funding follows the areas of greatest need. The pilots and refinements are all trying to encourage innovation within these schools to ensure that where something new is happening, it is impacting on the learning environment for children with special needs who come to school or who are at a disadvantage. We want to ensure we learn from this and it is mainstreamed, and that we can look at it as a way of improving performance through clustering and other initiatives.