Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
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94. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the status of the consultation process to bring more schools into the DEIS model; and the groups which have been involved in this consultation process. [25046/21]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The DEIS review which took place in 2015 and 2016 involved a comprehensive consultation process with education partners, the community and voluntary sector, other Government Departments and agencies, EU colleagues and with education academics and practitioners. Written submissions were also invited from education partners in June 2015 and were published on my Department’s website. The Report on the Review of DEIS was subsequently published in 2017.

From this consultation process, and as outlined in the DEIS Plan, it was clear that schools wanted a change to the DEIS identification process which would reduce the administration burden on school principals and there was a demand for a more responsive methodology. This feedback, together with the availability of the Pobal HP deprivation index and school data sources through pupil enrolment databases (POD and PPOD) facilitated the Department move to develop a new objective, statistics based model.

In 2017, as a proof of concept of the model, an additional 79 schools were added who were assessed as having the highest levels of concentrated disadvantage were brought into the DEIS programme using this model, with a further 30 being upgraded from Band 2 to Band 1 status at that time. This additionality to the DEIS Programme came into effect from September 2017.

The DEIS Plan acknowledged that further work was required to refine the model and my Department is undertaking an extensive body of work in relation to this. As part of the process when there is a roll out of any changed or a new model, my Department engages with the education partners to ensure that there is a clear understanding across the system and that the process is clear, open, transparent and easily understood. As part of the refinement of the model my Department commenced a consultation process with the education partners, (i.e. school management bodies, and unions and the national parents council representative bodies) on the technical aspects and implementation of the model and further work on the model is being progressed. Work on refinement of the model is ongoing and until this work is complete it is not intended to extend DEIS to further schools.