Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Education, Deputy Byrne, to the Chamber. I raise the issue of the lack of support provided to children and young people in disadvantaged communities. Such support would allow them to engage in curriculum learning. The DEIS system naturally tends to focus on what is required in schools as regards additional educational support. However, in many disadvantaged schools, there is a substantial need for other qualified professionals to support pupils, such that they can engage meaningfully in their curriculum learning. These are the children who are falling through the gaps and the ones for whom intergenerational poverty, trauma and deprivation will persist.

Professor Selina McCoy and postdoctoral research fellow Dr. Eamonn Carroll, both of the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, argued in a 2022 article that critical metrics in Irish education have remained stubbornly persistent, including the gap in school completion rates between DEIS and non-DEIS schools. They pointed to the findings of Educational Research Centre analysis that highlighted that children experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage were more likely to lose out on learning because of alcohol and drug use, being absent from school and not being attentive in class compared with their majority peers. In addition, they were found likely to have fewer educational resources at home and less likely to aspire to progress in their education.

While schools rightly welcome their DEIS clarification and the additional educational resources it can bring, many DEIS schools experience acute challenges within their student body that simply cannot be met through traditional educational supports. This might be a pre-existing psychological or physical trauma that a child comes to school with because of which he or she is simply unable to access his or her education on a consistent basis. This, of course, impacts the child or children in question but it can also manifest itself in significant disruptions for their classmates and the broader school community.Before curriculum learning can begin for many children in these schools, their immediate needs must first be met. This may require psychological or sociological support or additional minding, nurturing, caring or feeding. These schools need additional targeted support to meet their students and communities’ needs. Equalisation in Irish education, where there is equality in outcome as well as opportunity, can only happen once this disparity is recognised. DEIS in its current form can only go so far in realising this change.

In their 2022 article, Professor McCoy and Dr. Carroll advised that educational inequality is a systematic phenomenon which must be addressed structurally and not just in the classroom. School staff can only do so much in trying to overcome what happens outside the classroom for their pupils, where children are living in poverty, their parents are in addiction, their home is a hotel room or they have been waiting months or years for access to therapeutic supports or mental health services. In recent months, I have been working with St. Aidan’s Senior National School in Brookfield on this issue with one of the brilliant school staff members, Dallas Hartland. In St. Aidan’s and many schools like it, over one quarter of pupils experience significant trauma annually. It is hard to comprehend how common this for children is in these schools compared with those who might be called "normal" children in Ireland. They are two vastly different lived experiences and there are two vastly different educational experiences as a result.

I raise this matter because every year politicians celebrate and advocate for DEIS status for schools. I come from a community where I see what is needed in addition to DEIS. It feels as if the idea of DEIS has become somewhat diluted and it is not reaching the children who need the most help.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I am happy to speak on this issue. It is almost 18 years to the day since the then Fianna Fáil Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Mary Hanafin, established the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, DEIS, programme. Disadvantage occurs throughout our communities and schools but I believe education is the great leveller, and we must do all that we can in order to support all students and young people accessing education in its fullest sense. In this respect, the Department provides a wide range of supports to all schools, DEIS and non-DEIS, to support the inclusion of all students and address barriers to students achieving their potential.

Supplementing the universal supports available to all schools, the DEIS programme is a key policy initiative of the Department to address concentrated educational disadvantage at school level in a targeted and equitable way across the primary and post-primary sector. I am very conscious of the benefits of the DEIS programme, to which the Senator alluded. Analysis has shown that since the programme began, it has helped to close the gap in achievement between schools serving the highest levels of educational disadvantage and those serving populations with little or no disadvantage. It has provided children who come to education at a disadvantage with an equitable opportunity to achieve their potential in education.

This year, the Department will spend approximately €180 million providing additional supports to schools in the DEIS programme. This includes an additional €32 million allocated to extend the programme from last September, meaning the programme now includes over 1,200 schools and supports approximately 240,000 students. This means one in four of all students are now supported in the programme.

The DEIS programme targets the highest levels of resources at those primary schools with the highest levels of concentrated educational disadvantage through according DEIS urban band 1 status. Schools in this band receive a more beneficial staffing schedule. Class sizes have been reduced in DEIS urban band 1 schools in recent budgets. This means that this year the staffing schedule for DEIS urban band 1 vertical schools is 20:1; DEIS urban band 1 junior schools is 18:1; and DEIS urban band 1 senior schools is 22:1. Urban band 1 schools receive a DEIS grant which reflects their high level of concentrated disadvantage and receive priority access to the support of the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS. DEIS urban band 1 schools are also included in the home school community liaison scheme and have access to the school completion and schools meals programmes.

Last year, the Department announced the extension of the DEIS programme to benefit 361 schools. This included 79 new and existing DEIS primary schools which were included in DEIS urban band 1 for the first time and this year received an increased allocation of support.This means the highest levels of support under the DEIS programme are now provided to 306 primary schools.

Schools were identified for inclusion in the programme through the application of the refined DEIS identification model. The development of this model involved an extensive body of work by the DEIS technical group to identify concentrated levels of disadvantage in schools. The model used the Pobal HP deprivation index and took into consideration the significant educational disadvantage experienced by Traveller and Roma learners and by students residing in direct provision and emergency homeless accommodation.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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The Minister of State indicated that the gap in educational achievement has narrowed. In fact, that is true only in respect of specific categories and metrics, in which we see a slight narrowing. My fear is that without an adequate review of DEIS that targets the children who need it most, and if we start framing many different schools, whatever bands they are in, as DEIS schools, the statistics will be altered such that we are not capturing the poorest and the most well off. In the case of access programmes working with schools in Tallaght, for example, they are working with the best performing schools in the area even though those schools may be disadvantaged. When we start categorising so many different schools as being within DEIS, we may be working with some of better performing schools within a disadvantaged area. This completely skews the statistics such that the poorest children in DEIS schools do not get what they need by way of occupational therapy, trauma support and so on. It is not true to say the gap is narrowing.

I have a specific question the Minister of State might put to the Minister, Deputy Foley. Regarding the consultation with relevant stakeholders, the reply to a recent parliamentary question does not map out how that consultation is going to happen and what it will look like. Will the Minister of State seek an answer from the Department on that?

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I will take the points the Senator raised back to the Minister. I do not doubt the genuineness of her contributions, but nor do I doubt the genuineness of politicians around the country seeking DEIS status for schools in their area. In my constituency, two schools in the same village were added to the DEIS programme last year. It is extremely obvious from the Pobal maps that this is a disadvantaged area. The colour of the map leaves no doubt that the status is required. Those children are entitled, as is every child in the country, to the level of supports they need. Nobody has a monopoly on wisdom in this area. People want supports for disadvantaged children right across the country. The scheme acknowledges there are different categories of disadvantage and it provides for that.

The provision of therapies is a separate issue we need to address. I agree with the Senator that we need to put in place specific therapies, particularly in special schools. It is not a bad idea to start with the most disadvantaged schools and put in place psychotherapy, occupational therapy and whatever therapies are needed. We have made huge progress in this country. The DEIS programme did not exist 20 years ago. We have the highest level of educational attainment in the world.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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The programme exists because it was a campaign issue at the time.

Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)
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The time is up.

Lynn Ruane (Independent)
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All the education forums set up to address educational equality were disbanded in order that the Labour Party could announce a DEIS programme that has not done anything.

Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)
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The Senator had an opportunity to speak and the Minister of State has replied. She is entitled to raise the issue again at a later date. We must move on.