John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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Question 651: To ask the Minister for Education and Science, further to Parliamentary Question No. 451 of 26 May 2009 confirming the difference in pupil-teacher ratio for DEIS schools in rural and urban areas, the way this difference can be justified for rural schools; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22365/09]

Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, 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 an integrated School Support Programme (SSP). DEIS brings together and builds upon a number of existing interventions in schools with concentrated levels of disadvantage. The process of identifying schools for participation in DEIS was managed by the Educational Research Centre (ERC) on behalf of the Department and supported by quality assurance work co-ordinated through the Department's regional offices and the Inspectorate. There are 876 schools in DEIS. These comprise 673 primary schools (199 Urban Band 1, 141 Urban Band 2 and 333 Rural) and 203 second-level schools.

Primary schools serving rural communities, including towns with populations below 1,500, are designated as rural. The indicators used in identifying schools for participation in DEIS took into account the differences between urban and rural disadvantage. The ERC's overall approach was guided by the definition of educational disadvantage in the Education Act (1998), as: "the impediments to education arising from social or economic disadvantage which prevent students from deriving appropriate benefit from the education in schools".

Educational disadvantage is present in both the urban and rural context in Ireland. Both urban and rural disadvantage share many characteristics, such as poverty, unemployment and poor housing conditions, but there are also a number of ways in which rural disadvantage differs from urban disadvantage. Firstly, in rural areas, disadvantage may occur in single families or in small pockets. Secondly it is usually widely dispersed. As a result, its presence and effects will be less noticeable than in urban areas where it appears in a concentrated form. Thirdly, disadvantage in rural areas may be associated with a degree of isolation from a range of services available in towns and cities. As a result the school commute may prove problematic, while the availability of other services may be very limited or non-existent. Isolation and dispersal also present difficulties when it comes to providing intervention to help pupils cope with disadvantage.

The pupil teacher ratios of 20:1 in junior classes (infants through second-class) and 24:1 in senior classes (third through sixth-class) apply to the 199 urban/town primary schools with the highest concentrations of disadvantage. The rationale for this decision is to ensure that resources are targeted in particular, though not exclusively, at schools where disadvantage is most concentrated. For schools other than those that benefit from lower PTR under DEIS, the mechanism used to allocate classroom teachers to primary schools is the staffing schedule and with effect from September 2009 the enrolment bands will be based on an average of 28 pupils per class teacher.

In the current climate my Department's main focus is to retain, where possible, key resources in the schools targeted under the DEIS initiative. This approach is in line with the broad thrust of the recommendations of the Comptroller and Auditor General in his report on Primary Disadvantage in 2006, which suggested that the Department should focus its educational disadvantage measures on those schools serving the most disadvantaged.