John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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168. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the strategies to support children and young persons who are at risk of the highest levels of educational disadvantage; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [57291/21]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) is the main policy instrument of my Department to tackle educational disadvantage.

In the 2021/22 academic year there are 884 schools in the DEIS Programme serving over 186,000 pupils - 687 Primary and 197 Post Primary. This represents approximately 20% of the overall school population. The total Department spend on DEIS in 2021 is over €150 million, which includes over €26 million for the School Completion Programme (SCP).

The full list of supports to DEIS schools is available at:

Budget 2022 has allocated the largest-ever increase in funding for the DEIS programme, providing for an additional allocation of €18 million in 2022 (€32 million over a full year) which will enable an expansion in 2022 of the programme to further schools.

This means that by 2023 the Irish Government will target over €180 million at addressing educational disadvantage through the DEIS programme, an increase of 20% on the 2021 allocation.

The continuum of education is supported through a range of dedicated supports in line with the needs of the child. These supports include the provision of teachers, special needs assistants and psychological support from the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) available in DEIS and non DEIS schools.

The National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) through the provision of school-based psychological services, supports the wellbeing, academic, social and emotional development of children in primary and post-primary schools.

All mainstream schools receive additional allocations of Special Education Teaching (SET) support based on the profiled needs of the school. The SET allocation model provides a single unified allocation for special educational teaching support to schools, based on a school’s educational profile. It allows schools to provide additional teaching support for all pupils who require such support and to deploy resources based on each pupil’s individual learning needs. It gives flexibility to schools in deploying their resources. They can take account of the actual learning needs of pupils rather than being guided primarily by a particular diagnosis of disability. The Department of Education has published guidelines for schools as to how they should deploy their resources.

In September, I announced a Covid Learning and Support Scheme (CLASS) has been put in place to help schools mitigate the adverse impacts of Covid-19 on pupil/student learning loss and wellbeing arising from the periods of school closures in 2020 and 2021. Provision is being made for up to €52 Million in extra teaching hours for schools during the current school year.

Under the programme, a block of additional teaching hours is being provided to each recognised school. Schools may use the additional teaching hours in accordance with the needs of their students. This will enable schools to identify students most at risk of learning loss arising from the recent disrupted school experience and put in place specific targeted teaching supports to meet these students’ needs. Enhanced allocations are provided under CLASS for special schools and DEIS schools.