Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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183. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his plans to support disadvantaged children in schools not under the DEIS programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21417/17]

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 social inclusion in education policy.

The rationale for allocating resources and supports based on a schools’ level of concentrated disadvantage is based on the existence of a “multiplier effect” whereby students attending a school with a concentration of students from disadvantaged backgrounds have poorer academic outcomes.

As noted in DEIS Plan 2017, the implementation of a 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.

It is important to note that DEIS supports are just one of a suite of supports provided by the Department of Education and Skills and by other Government Departments and agencies to assist schools in meeting the identified educational needs of their pupil cohorts. These include supports for children with special educational needs, English as an additional language (EAL) supports, Educational Welfare Services and School Meals schemes.

My Department will also provide some €450m in 2017 in supports to promote  students from under-represented groups to participate in higher education. The main support is the student grant scheme which will benefit some 80,000 students in 2017 through investment of more than €380million. I also recently announced funding of €2.4m for measures to widen access to initial teacher education for students from groups that are currently under-represented. This will support 120 students to access initial teacher education over the next three years. These measures are targeted at those students most in need of support and will benefit students in DEIS and non-DEIS schools who meet the relevant eligibility criteria.