John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Question 411: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the status of the appeal by a school (details supplied) in County Waterford against the decision to exclude it from the school support programme; if her attention has been drawn to the concern being expressed by parents of the pupils and the staff in the school in question at the consequences of losing the school's disadvantaged status; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [26766/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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At the outset, I want to state that no school has been told that they are going to lose any of the resources that they have been receiving under pre-existing schemes for tackling disadvantage as a result of the introduction of the new DEIS initiative. On the contrary, the new School Support Programme is aimed at providing even more extra resources for the most disadvantaged schools in the country.

Schools that did not qualify for the new programme will keep the extra resources they are getting under pre-existing schemes for the 2006/07 school year and after that they will continue to get support in line with the level of disadvantage among their pupils.

I can assure the Deputy that there is no reason for schools that have not been identified for the new programme to worry as they will continue to get support in line with the level of disadvantage among their pupils.

DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools), the action plan for educational inclusion, provides for a standardised system for identifying levels of disadvantage and a new integrated School Support Programme (SSP). The School Support Programme will bring together, and build upon, a number of existing interventions in schools with a concentrated level of disadvantage.

The process of identifying primary and second-level schools for participation in the SSP was managed by the Educational Research Centre (ERC) on behalf of my Department and supported by quality assurance work co-ordinated through the Department's regional offices and the Inspectorate.

As a result of the identification process, 840 schools were invited to participate in the SSP. These comprised 640 primary schools (320 urban/town schools and 320 rural schools) and 200 second-level schools.

A review process has been put in place for both primary and second-level schools. The review process applies only to those primary schools that participated in the ERC survey in May 2005 and only to those eligible second-level schools for which data were available from the relevant databases. The school referred to by the Deputy has submitted a review application. It is anticipated that the review process will be completed shortly.