Results 14,121-14,140 of 32,583 for speaker:Richard Bruton

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Schools Building Projects (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: I will repeat some of the information, but it is important that the House knows how the system works. The Department operates 314 geographic planning areas. It looks at the school places being provided in the school planning areas and sizes up this information against the demographic pressures. Geographic information systems data are used, as is the Department's database of children coming...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Schools Building Projects (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: The data are provided. There are 11 post-primary schools with 6,168 pupils. Capacity in the area, with the inclusion of the two new schools, is 6,711, or 540 additional places over and above current enrolments. As the Deputy said, two of the schools are new. The Department does not select individual patrons. We have a patronage competition. We do not indicate whether it should be this...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Schools Building Projects (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: Two new schools have been provided in the area. It is not the case that the Department is doing nothing. Two new schools have been provided.

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Schools Building Projects (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: As of today, the Department's data show that there are more places than current enrolments. Obviously, if the Deputy wishes to submit data, I will get the officials to examine them. What happens in many cases - I have a little experience from meeting other Deputies - is that groups will look outside the catchment area to find schools to try to form different geographic areas than those used...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Teacher Recruitment (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: The Deputy is grossly exaggerating the position. The truth is that the Teaching Council, having looked at this issue, was unable to make a recommendation because of its complexity. It is now seeking to ensure that data sources are identified and that information not being collected is collected. It has indicated the difficulty that exists. There are genuine problems. There is not a...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Teacher Recruitment (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: We continue to train teachers. We have 1,250 teachers coming out of the colleges at primary level and 1,750 people completing training at post-primary level. We are continually training additional teachers to meet the needs in our schools, but the Deputy is right. We need to refine that model to try to match more closely, for example, the emergence of physics. We have never had enough...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Teacher Recruitment (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: What the Teaching Council has been asked to advise on is a workforce planning model for the entire teaching profession. Clearly, the data from its analysis of this is simply not available. This is not a matter of an unwillingness to put one's hands on data. This is going back to the origination of data to find new data and then to try to put it into a system that will allow workforce...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Teacher Recruitment (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: I think the Deputy is trying to shout me down.

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Disadvantaged Status (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: I wish to advise the Deputy that a key element of the DEIS plan for 2017 is the availability of a new identification process, as we have discussed, and which I outlined to the other Deputies. In terms of the data sources, for example, they are using age dependency, levels of population decline, the education status of the families, overcrowding in the households, the occupations,...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Disadvantaged Status (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: The truth is that I was able to allow 30 schools move from urban band two to urban band one and to provide for 15 new urban band one schools. We identified 45 of the most deprived schools in the country to get the support of not only additional pupil-teacher ratios, access to the free meals scheme and access to the DEIS grant, but also access to a smaller class size. We used objective...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Disadvantaged Status (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: 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...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Disadvantaged Status (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: 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...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Teacher Recruitment (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: Between last September and next September, we will have employed 4,600 extra teachers. We are putting teachers back into our school process and this means that teachers, who were emigrating and not able to find places, are finding places in our schools. A technical working group was set up by the Teaching Council to formulate advice on teacher supply. The group produced an interim...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Disadvantaged Status (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: A significant benefit of the new identification process for the DEIS plan for 2017 lies in its capacity as a uniform system adopting common criteria and a consistent application across all primary and post-primary schools so it is a completely independent process. The key data sources are the primary online, POD, and post-primary online, PPOD, databases and CSO data from the national census...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Disadvantaged Status (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: The criteria are published. This has been subject to very rigorous review based on best international practice. I can read out the criteria. They are age dependency within the area; demographic decline or rise; whether parents have primary, secondary or third level education; overcrowding within the families involved; occupational status; lone parent profile; and unemployment rates for...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Disadvantaged Status (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: I have indicated very clearly that only schools that meet the highest disadvantaged criteria are being admitted on this occasion. It involves 79 schools and a number of schools have been upgraded so that is less than 2% of all schools in the population. This is based on the cases that are glaring examples of a scheme that has not been open since 2009 and where the indicators of disadvantage...

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed) - Priority Questions: Disadvantaged Status (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: 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...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: State Examinations (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: The State Examinations Commission (SEC) has responsibility for the administration of the Final Examinations that form part of the assessment procedures for Junior Cycle. The SEC has provided reassurance in relation to concerns that some students may not have opportunities to complete all elements of the SEC’s Junior Cycle Final Examination, in English, in 2017.  The Examination...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Building Projects Status (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: The Deputy will be aware from my earlier answer to Deputy Curran of the background to this project.  The stage 2(a) report is currently under review in my Department. Stage 2(a) is a critical stage in the progress of any project. It effectively sets the final design of the building to ensure a high quality of accommodation and to facilitate a smooth progression through the...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Refurbishment (1 Mar 2017)

Richard Bruton: I wish to advise the Deputy that my Department received an application from the school in question for significant funding to facilitate major reconfiguration works within the school building. The request is mainly to have classrooms which were partitioned in 1990 to accommodate a Gaelscoil restored to their original size.  The application included architectural plans prepared...