Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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297. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his plans to reintroduce home school liaison officers in schools in urban and rural areas. [44994/18]

Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy will also be aware that the Home School Community Liaison (HSCL) Scheme is a school-based intervention provided to DEIS schools to address the needs of all pupils/families at risk of educational disadvantage through acknowledging and developing the role of the parent as prime educator. The role of the HSCL Coordinator is to work primarily with the salient adults in the child’s life, in order to empower them, so that they can better support their children to attend school, participate in education and develop positive attitudes to life-long learning. Central to the HSCL initiative, is the identification of educational needs and the provision of a tailored and proportionate response to those needs, through a range of interventions, which are evidence-based, focused and structured.

All DEIS Urban Primary and DEIS Post Primary schools are currently included in the HSCL Scheme, which serves 539 schools. The scheme is delivered by 416 full-time HSCL Coordinators who are teachers in these schools and assigned to HSCL duties either in individual schools or clusters of schools, catering for approximately 156,000 pupils.

The impact of socio-economic factors on educational outcomes can be different between urban and rural settings and we need to take account of that. While urban and rural disadvantage share many characteristics, such as poverty, unemployment and poor housing conditions, as such disadvantage in a rural context does not have the same impact on educational performance. The Performance Report from the National Assessments of English Reading and Mathematics (NAERM), 2014 highlighted the gap that exists between DEIS urban Band 1 schools and pupils in other schools in both reading and maths. Performance in rural DEIS schools is about the same as the national average, while performance in DEIS Band 2 primary schools has improved substantially according to the 2014 National Assessments. Assessments of reading and mathematics performance in DEIS rural primary schools show that students in these schools in some cases perform better than rural non-DEIS schools and at the same level as their counterparts in urban non-DEIS schools.

My Department's objective in implementing DEIS Plan 2017 is to have the maximum possible impact on providing opportunities for students most at risk of disadvantage. To achieve this, additional resources must be targeted as closely as possible at those students with the greatest need in terms of concentrated levels of disadvantage.

The Deputy may wish to note that Rural DEIS primary schools continue to be supported through the DEIS programme with a range of additional supports, including grant aid in the form of a DEIS grant, enhanced book grant, access to the DEASP School Meals Programme and priority access for teachers to a range of professional development programmes as well as the Incredible Years and Friends programmes.

My Department has no plans at present to extend this Scheme beyond DEIS Schools.