Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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220. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason a school (details supplied) in County Donegal does not obtain delivering equality of education in schools, DEIS, status; if his attention has been drawn to the fact that all the surrounding schools within the same catchment area have successfully obtained DEIS status; if his attention has been further drawn to the fact that similar socio-economic indicators and factors apply right across the catchment area and therefore there is no divergence of indicators which would lead to the school not receiving the required DEIS status; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48237/18]

Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy is aware, 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 calculation of the level of disadvantage in each school is based on the socio-economic background of their pupil cohort using centrally held data as previously outlined to the Deputy. It is not based on the location of the school but on the geographical CSO Small Areas where the pupil cohort resides. Therefore it is important to understand that the demographic of neighbouring schools will not necessarily be the same and can indicate different levels of disadvantage based on the actual pupil cohort in each individual school.

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

DEIS Plan 2017 states that the improved data on the socio-demographic of schools resulting from the new identification model will have an impact not only on the assessment of schools for inclusion in the programme but also on the scaling of resources to allow for more graduated levels of support. This in turn allows for the ultimate objective of allocating resources to best meet the identified need of individual schools.

In order to achieve this, the current identification model needs to be as accurate as possible and this will be facilitated by the use of Eircode to ensure correct inputting of addresses. Further analysis is also required to examine other variables known to be strong predictors of educational disadvantage in the context of resource allocation. Therefore, in order to ensure the quality of the address data and conduct further analysis, it is not intended to extend the DEIS programme to any further schools until this work is complete.