Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 532: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the procedure in place to address the concerns of a school (details supplied) in County Mayo that did not qualify for inclusion in DEIS but regards itself as having a level of disadvantage of a scale to warrant its inclusion in the programme. [17038/07]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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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. In the primary sector, the identification process was based on a survey carried out by the Educational Research Centre (ERC) in May 2005, from which a response rate of more than 97% was achieved. As a completed survey form was not received from the school referred to by the Deputy it could not be assessed for participation in DEIS. The issue of primary schools that did not complete survey forms in 2005 will be further considered by my Department in the context of the implementation of the action plan over the period 2007-10.