Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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1081. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of DEIS primary schools and secondary schools, respectively by county; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [20563/21]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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DEIS – Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools is the main policy initiative of my Department to address educational disadvantage at school level.

The renewed DEIS Plan published in 2017 sets out the vision for future interventions in the critical area of educational disadvantage policy and builds on what has already been achieved by schools who have benefitted from the additional supports available under the initial DEIS programme introduced in 2005

My Department's total spend on DEIS in 2021 is over €150 million, which includes over €26 million for the School Completion Programme. In the 2020/21 academic year there are 887 schools in the DEIS Programme serving over 185,000 pupils - 689 Primary and 198 Post Primary. The county breakdown is as follows:

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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1082. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of DEIS primary schools and secondary schools, respectively by county which are provided with a home school community liaison coordinator; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [20564/21]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Currently, all DEIS Urban Primary and DEIS Post Primary schools are included in the Home School Community Liaison (HSCL) Scheme.

The scheme is delivered by 415 full-time HSCL Coordinators who are teachers assigned to HSCL duties across DEIS Urban Primary and DEIS Post Primary schools either in individual schools or clusters of schools.

The table below shows the number of schools by county who have access to a HSCL Coordinator under the DEIS programme.

In addition to the above under the National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy (NTRIS), a pilot project to support Traveller and Roma pupils is in operation in 4 locations (in Galway, Wexford, Dublin and Cork) with 1 HSCL assigned in each of the pilot locations to support schools involved in the NTRIS pilot project.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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1083. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the funding allocated to DEIS schools in each of the academic years 2017-2018, 2018-2019, 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 in the form of a DEIS grant to support learning in the context of DEIS for the academic year; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [20565/21]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy is aware, my Department issues the DEIS Grant to Primary and Post-Primary schools on an annual basis.

This is an annual grant to support learning in the context of DEIS for the academic year. Guidelines are issued by my Department to schools in relation to how the DEIS grant can be spent. It is a matter for each individual school to determine how best to use this funding, but it is intended to support the objectives of the DEIS programme.

In recognition of the difficulties faced by some students to engage with remote learning, at the time the grant issued last year all DEIS schools were informed by letter that they could consider using some of their DEIS funding to support pupils’ learning, for example to arrange access to additional materials of supports for students during the move to remote teaching and learning caused by Covid-19.

Total DEIS Grant funding for the years requested is as follows: