Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)
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Question 80: To ask the Minister for Education and Science, further to her reply to Parliamentary Question No. 157 of 16 November 2006, when she will introduce a separate programme of national monitoring which will enable trend data on pupil achievement in different categories of school to be compiled; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [28468/07]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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It is envisaged that the monitoring will be carried out by the ERC based on the model currently used to conduct national surveys of reading and mathematics in primary schools. The assessments will be targeted at

A nationally representative sample of schools

A representative sample of schools in the School Support Programme of DEIS

A representative sample of Irish medium schools

It is planned that the national monitoring will be repeated on a cyclical basis, with the DEIS sample being undertaken more frequently. The purpose will be to identify changes in national trends over time for particular categories of school and to inform ongoing policy development. No individual school results will be identifiable in this process. My Department has not finalised all the details yet regarding the overall programme for national monitoring.

However, a separate evaluation of DEIS, the Action Plan on Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, is under way, focused on schools in the School Support Programme of DEIS. This is being prioritised to ensure base line data which will enable the impact of the DEIS programme to be assessed over the period to 2009/10. In spring 2007, baseline achievement data, based on tests in English and Mathematics, has been gathered by the Educational Research Centre from about 17,000 pupils in a sample of almost 500 participating schools. Pupils took tests in English and mathematics in second, third, and sixth class in the urban strand of SSP, and in third and sixth class in the rural strand of the programme. Testing will be repeated in the same schools and with many of the same pupils in the spring of 2010. The data gathered from the DEIS evaluation will provide important information for the DEIS strand of the national monitoring programme.