Dáil debates
Tuesday, 17 October 2023
Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions
Educational Disadvantage
4:00 pm
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
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2. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will deliver on a DEIS plus proposal for schools in areas of the highest disadvantage; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [45280/23]
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
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As the Minister knows, I have been raising the issue of the potential for a DEIS plus scheme over the last period. I know that the Minister, in her answer, will give me an extensive Government response on DEIS, its expansion and all that. I really need her to drill down into this specific proposal for trauma-informed supports for a number of extremely disadvantaged schools in a number of identified geographic locations in Dublin and across the country.
Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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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.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
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I am talking about a specific group of schools that the Minister referenced. I have met them. A letter was written by 30 or so principals in extremely disadvantaged schools in Tallaght, Ballymun and Dublin 17 in my constituency. They are witnessing things they never witnessed before. They are talking about intergenerational trauma. They say the Covid pandemic had a profoundly damaging effect on these children. They say to me that some children are being lost for good and forever because of a lack of supports. I spoke to one principal who said that because of a particular feud that is happening in the geographic region that she teaches in, they have to change the way that they walk to swimming every week because a child might be shot. This is profound disadvantage. The only chance they have is their school, their education and the supports that their families might get. They are asking for an expansion of the north east inner city multidisciplinary teams model to include all schools in their cluster, for nurture rooms, and for the expansion of the support teacher service. We do not need to chew over this for a prolonged period. We do not need to review it. We just need to do it.
4:10 pm
Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I appreciate where the Deputy is coming from. I have met with many of these principals and heard what they have to say. I acknowledge, as we all do, that DEIS has a very significant and positive impact on our schools. We see the benefit of it but we also know two things; there are children who are at risk of educational disadvantage who are attending schools that are not DEIS schools, and there are children attending DEIS schools that are looking for models, as outlined by the Deputy, such as DEIS plus.
To support us in the work we are doing, there is an OECD review. It is a significant review where we have invited the OECD project, Strength through Diversity: Education for Inclusive Societies, to review the current provision, in both DEIS and non-DEIS schools, with a view to looking at spaces and opportunities to do more, to do extra, to continue what is going well and to provide the additionality in areas where it is required. I do not doubt the earnestness, truthfulness and lived experience of the principals who have brought this to my attention. We will work through it. The first step is to have a critical and impactful review, which is being conducted by the OECD.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
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With the greatest of respect, I cannot look a teacher or principal in the eye and say, "I know you really want resources but there is an OECD review". I cannot do that with any sort of straight face. I get incredibly frustrated when Government representatives tell me that some children who are disadvantaged do not go to DEIS schools. Every child who goes to a DEIS school, particularly in an area of profound disadvantage is a profoundly disadvantaged student. The school is their only hope and only chance. It really is. Without these very specific trauma-based supports, which principals have outlined, we are losing these children. We are losing them day after day. We do not have the time for an OECD review.
I suggest that the urgency with which principals have presented this to me is the type of urgency the Minister and her Department need. It is not a big ask for these trauma-based supports that principals feel would be an intervention that could save some lives, or certainly prevent a child from going in a wrong direction. With the greatest of respect, I ask the Minister to please not tell me about disadvantaged children going to non-DEIS schools and the expansion of DEIS services, but talk to me about the most disadvantaged schools, the most disadvantaged children within those schools, and what we can do to assist the principals who are asking for this very specific support.
Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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There is not much the Deputy is saying that I disagree with. I have acknowledged the need for it. I have met with many of the principals who have presented their experience to me. It is important if we are to make any changes, amendments or additions to DEIS, that we have an overall look at DEIS, how it is working, where it is working well and where there are opportunities to do things differently. If I did not do that, it would also be a dereliction.
We have a scheme, at a cost of more than €180 million, that we know is working well in many instances but we also know there is scope to do things differently. Those compiling the OECD report were here for a considerable period throughout the summer. They engaged with a number of different schools, principals, and a number of different bodies, agencies and organisations on how we can do things differently. It will be an independent report that will be completed as quickly as possible. As I said, we have introduced many other measures in both budget 2023 and budget 2024 that support schools but, in the interim, when the OECD completes this body of work, it will give us a pathway forward as regards much of what the Deputy highlighted.