Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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130. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason a school (details supplied) did not receive DEIS status; his plans to award DEIS status to this school; if he has put an appeals process in place for schools such as this to appeal the recent decision not to provide them DEIS status; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18389/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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DEIS is my Department's main policy initiative to tackle educational disadvantage. The DEIS Plan for 2017 sets out our vision for future intervention in the critical area of education policy.

The key data sources used in the identification process are the DES Primary Online Database (POD) and Post-Primary Online (PPOD) Databases, and CSO data from the National Census of Population as represented in the Pobal HP Index for Small Areas which is a method of measuring the relative affluence or disadvantage of a particular geographical area.  Variables used in the compilation of the HP Index include those related to demographic growth, dependency ratios, education levels, single parent rate, overcrowding, social class, occupation and unemployment rates.  This data is combined with pupil data, anonymised and aggregated to small area, to provide information on the relative level of concentrated disadvantage present in the pupil cohort of individual schools.

I am satisfied that the Identification Model, to assess the level of disadvantage among the pupil cohort of a school has been applied fairly using centrally held data adopting an objective and scientific approach which has been uniformly applied for all schools in the country. 

Full details of the process involved in the assessment of schools is available on my Departments website at

The following programme of work will be carried out, in consultation with stakeholders:

-  The model will be further refined and, for both financial and logistical reasons, the following incremental phased approach to the deployment of resources will be implemented:

-  In early 2017 all schools across the primary and post primary sectors will be assessed in terms of their socio-economic demographic using the new Assessment Framework;

-  From September 2017, supports under the School Support Programme will be extended on a phased basis to those schools not already in receipt of these supports and who are identified as having the highest concentrations of pupils at greatest risk of educational disadvantage;

- Further analysis will be conducted to examine other variables known to be strong predictors of educational disadvantage in the context of resource allocation.

Work will be carried out to consider designing a more tailored system of resource allocation, within which there are more grades of disadvantage identified and resources are allocated accordingly in response to the needs of individual schools;

A Monitoring and Evaluation Framework will be implemented, to improve transparency and to determine which interventions are having the greatest impact in terms of delivering better outcomes for learners;

A review will be carried out at the end of the 2017/2018 academic year to examine how the new model of allocating resources has operated;

The aim will be that, following this work, in 2018 the new model of resource allocation will be finalised, the objective of which will be to more closely match resources with identified needs in individual schools.

I also wish to inform the Deputy that a communication to all schools will issue shortly to provide information on the identification model including details of how the datasets are used to determine a schools level of disadvantage; the importance of data quality to the process and the need for detailed and up to date information from schools.

In terms of the process to date, the position in relation to the new model is that, in its initial application, it has identified that there are schools not previously included in DEIS, whose level of concentrated disadvantage is significantly higher than many schools already in the programme.

It is important to note that this is a first step in a process and the fact that a school has not been included now does not preclude its inclusion at a later date should the assessment indicate a level of disadvantage that warrants additional supports.  As I have also previously stated I am fully aware that there are further schools whose concentrated level of disadvantage may not be at the highest level, but may nevertheless be at a level which warrants additional supports for pupils under DEIS. 

The implementation of the new objective central data-based model of identifying levels of disadvantage within school populations will be followed by a further programme of work to create a more dynamic model where levels of resource more accurately follow the levels of need identified by that model. The completion of this work will inform ongoing provision and consideration will be given to extending DEIS supports to a further group of schools as resources permit.

As provided for in the DEIS Action Plan the Department has begun a process of verifying the data used to identify the levels of concentrated disadvantage for each school. I can confirm that the school referred to by the Deputy has requested such verification. When this process has been concluded all schools, who have requested such verification, will be notified directly by my Department of the outcome of this process.