Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Question 383: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the reason her Department does not provide funding to a community-based organisation (details supplied) in County Laois, in view of the fact that the bulk of its work centres around supporting and encouraging children to continue in mainstream education; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [22633/06]

Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Question 384: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if she will examine an innovative educational scheme (details supplied) in County Laois with a view to making it a pilot project to assist in primary education here; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [22634/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 383 and 384 together.

Tackling educational disadvantage is one of my main priorities and the new plan for educational inclusion, DEIS ( Delivering Equality of Opportunities in Schools) aims to ensure that the educational needs of children and young people, from pre-school to completion of upper second-level education (3 to 18 years), from disadvantaged communities are prioritised and effectively addressed. The plan is designed to ensure that schools serving the most disadvantaged communities benefit from the maximum level of support available.

Over the years, no less than 8 separate schemes for disadvantaged primary schools have been put in place. Some schools were benefiting from just one or two of these and others were benefiting from more. The new School Support Programme which is currently being rolled out in 840 schools selected to participate, will rationalise existing schemes and integrate them into the new School Support Programme, which is designed to ensure that the most disadvantaged schools benefit from a comprehensive package of supports, while ensuring that others continue to get support in line with the level of disadvantage among their pupils.

A key objective of this action plan is to enhance integration and partnership working, both within the education sector itself and between all other relevant Government departments, agencies, organisations and groups. Under DEIS, my Department, through the network of ten regional offices is enhancing its capacity to work in partnership with locally based agencies and individuals promoting social inclusion measures.

Measures under DEIS range from pre-school interventions, supports for tackling children's literacy problems, reduced pupil teacher ratios, increased capitation grants, measures to tackle early school leaving and strengthen ties between the school, the family and the community. A key component of my Department's strategy to discriminate positively in favour of children and young people who are at risk of early school leaving is the School Completion Programme. This programme was implemented to directly target those in danger of dropping out of the education system and in line with current thinking favours an integrated cross-community and cross-sectoral approach based on the development of local strategies to ensure maximum participation levels in the education process. It entails targeting individual young people aged 4 — 18, both in and out of school, and arranging supports to address inequalities in education access, participation and outcomes.

Increased access will be provide to the 200 second level and 320 urban/town primary schools in SSP to a range of academic and non-academic supports based in-school, after school, out-of-school and during holiday time, based on best practices identified through the School Completion Programme (SCP). There are currently 82 School Completion Programme project sites located around the country and with the roll out of the new School Support Programme the number of project sites will be increased. In this context, I am not in favour of introducing new individual pilot schemes at this stage.