Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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90. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason a school (details supplied) has been excluded from DEIS and DEIS plus; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [40726/26]

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I have raised the unsustainable situation at Roxboro National School in Ballinrobe with the Minister's office numerous times since last November. I have visited the school, spoken with the management there and seen the urgent need for additional resources. That is why I was extremely disappointed to hear that the school had been excluded from the DEIS programme. I ask the Minister to explain to the school community why Roxboro National School has been excluded from DEIS and DEIS plus despite the obvious resource pressures that this particular school is facing.

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy for her question. Ensuring that every child and young person can reach their full potential is a key priority for me as Minister and for my Department. The DEIS programme and the new DEIS plus scheme, which will begin this year as part of the DEIS strategy to 2035, are key initiatives in my Department’s approach to addressing educational disadvantage.

Schools were identified for inclusion in the DEIS and DEIS plus programmes using refined, rules-based approaches built on nationally available pupil-level administrative data that was applied consistently across all schools in the country. The DEIS identification process is based on the principle of concentrated disadvantage and the proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds within a school. The DEIS identification process is based on the HP deprivation index assigned to the area where individual students reside, and on Traveller and Roma ethnicity.

It is important to stress that although a school is not included in DEIS or DEIS plus, this does not in any way imply that my Department is saying that disadvantage does not exist within that school community. I absolutely recognise the important role that schools like Roxboro National School in Ballinrobe, and the staff therein, play in supporting children who reside in international protection accommodation, for example. That is why, under the DEIS strategy to 2035, which is my Department’s long-term vision to address educational disadvantage in all schools, I announced a pilot scheme to extend home school community liaison, HSCL, provision to schools outside of the DEIS programme that have significant cohorts of children that are at risk of educational disadvantage or who are from new communities. Roxboro National School in Ballinrobe is one of 130 schools that will be supported under this scheme. Any future allocation of resources to address educational disadvantage in schools will be considered over the lifetime of the DEIS strategy out to 2035 and in the context of available resources.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I will outline to the Minister how Roxboro National School more than meets the criteria for DEIS status. It is a two-teacher rural primary school serving one of the most diverse and disadvantaged school populations in the country. The school currently has 35 pupils; 17 are from the Irish Traveller community and 18 are either in the International Protection Accommodation Service, IPAS, system, refugees, homeless or living in emergency accommodation. Three children have moderate learning difficulties and 31 to 35 require daily special education teaching supports. Due to the diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds of the families within the school community, parent contribution funding is non-existent. There is no functioning parents association and the school is really struggling to maintain a board of management. This all adds to the strain on the already stretched and struggling teaching staff there.

I acknowledge the Department's efforts thus far to assist the school. The school was told that it would be added to the HSCL scheme earlier this year. However, that will not even scratch the surface.

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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The DEIS plus strategy was a commitment in the programme for Government, the aim of which is to target areas across the country where there are really high risks of educational disadvantage. The evidence from international assessments on literacy and numeracy finds that Ireland performs very highly compared to other OECD countries or EU averages. However, the assessments also find that there are gaps remaining in relation to outcomes for children from areas of high deprivation. That was reinforced by the 2024 review of resourcing schools to address educational disadvantage in Ireland, which recommended higher levels of support for a small cohort of schools supporting the highest concentrations of children and young people at risk of educational disadvantage. That was the purpose of the DEIS plus strategy, but I hear what the Deputy is saying about Roxboro and other schools across the country that are not DEIS schools but have children and young people who are at risk of educational disadvantage within them. That is why I set up that pilot scheme specifically for schools like Roxboro National School in Ballinrobe, to give them access to a home school liaison position.

We will be looking at the DEIS plus strategy and how it is being rolled out. I would like to make it more flexible.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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There is transition and integration funding that can be used for other purposes when we have extreme cases like this. The management feared that the inclusion on the scheme to which the Minister refers would lead to Roxboro's exclusion from DEIS. which has now come to pass despite every other school in its HSCL cluster having DEIS or DEIS plus status. The school management and I are really struggling to understand how a school like Roxboro, with such a significant and concentrated need, has been left out of the DEIS scheme.

In a letter from her office to the school on 21 May, the Minister acknowledged the level of disadvantage experienced at Roxboro, yet the school is still excluded from DEIS. This is an exceptional school that needs help. I ask the Minister to outline a clear pathway for Roxboro to achieve DEIS status in the short rather than long term. In the long term, all of these children will be gone and they will have been failed by the system because we are not targeting the investment where it is needed.

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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The commitment in the programme for Government was for the DEIS plus strategy aimed at those areas of most severe educational disadvantage. That is why I set up a pilot specifically for schools that are not in DEIS, understanding the needs that are out there. I will be looking at that into the future to see what more we can do and what more supports we can provide for schools across the country.

With regard to the data, this is nationally available data that is applied right across the country, and also the enrolment data coming from our schools from the primary online database, POD and the post-primary online database system, P-POD, from our post-primary schools. Priority and weighting was given to schools in areas where there was a high level of unemployment, a high level of Roma or Traveller children within those schools, and students with lone parents were part of that as well. We have to make sure that we are looking at nationally available data and at the HP deprivation index. We also work with the Central Statistics Office, CSO, in making sure that we are refining the data that is coming to us, specifically in relation to schools across the country, and the enrolment data that schools are providing.