Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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297. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his plans to establish an appeals mechanism for schools that have to date failed to obtain DEIS status; if his attention has been drawn to the fact that schools have very little or no input in supplying school data and relevant information; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [54087/18]

Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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As the Deputy is aware, following the review of DEIS, my Department 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.

This was the culmination of more than 18 months of consultation and discourse with education partners and other stakeholders to ensure that identification of schools and future delivery of interventions is fully informed by the practical experience of teachers, parents, students and non-governmental organisations working on behalf of children at risk of educational disadvantage and their families.

There was a clear consensus throughout the review process that there was a need for a new approach to the arrangements for identifying schools and the survey approach used in 2005 would place an additional unwanted administrative burden on schools and school Principals. It was also considered unfair to expect schools/school Principals to gather sensitive socioeconomic data on its school community.

Details on how the new objective assessment framework was developed and what was taken into consideration are set out in Chapter 3 of the Report on the Review of DEIS.