John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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167. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the procedure for a school to apply for DEIS status; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38331/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I wish to inform the Deputy that schools are not required to make an application for inclusion in the DEIS programme, as all schools both Primary and Post Primary are assessed using a new uniform identification model.

Following a review of the DEIS programme, my Department has introduced an objective, statistics based model for assessing which schools merit inclusion in the DEIS Programme, so that all stakeholders can have confidence that we are targeting extra resources at those schools with the highest levels of concentrated disadvantage.

The key data sources used in the DEIS 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 supplied by schools, anonymised and aggregated to small area, to provide information on the relative level of concentrated disadvantage present in the pupil cohort of individual schools.

A detailed document explaining the methodology used in the Identification process is available on the Department’s website at

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Further quality assurance work is currently being conducted on the model and it is not intended to extend the DEIS programme to any further schools until this work is complete.