Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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789. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if her Department assesses the number of medical card holders within a school as an accurate measurement of gathering vital information on pupils, as opposed to the Eircode, which can inaccurately represent families in regard to the data used to decide DEIS status; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [1937/23]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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My Department provides a wide range of supports to all schools, DEIS and non-DEIS, to support the inclusion of all students and address barriers to students achieving their potential. Supplementing these universal supports, the DEIS programme provides a targeted and equitable way to address concentrated educational disadvantage that promotes equity across the primary and post-primary sector.

Schools have been identified for inclusion in the programme through the refined DEIS identification model which is an objective, statistics based model. This model uses information from the Department of Education enrolment databases and the Pobal HP Deprivation index. Schools were not required to apply for inclusion in the DEIS programme and the model has been applied fairly and equally to all schools.

The extension of the DEIS programme to additional schools followed intensive work by the DEIS technical group, which involved valuable input from stakeholders. The DEIS identification model aimed to identify those schools with the highest levels of concentrated disadvantage or the highest proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds within a school using the school's enrolment data and national census data as represented by the Pobal HP Deprivation index which is publicly available. The refined model built on the objectivity and fairness of the 2017 version, but also captured a greater breadth of disadvantage and accounted for severity of disadvantage through the application of a weighted process.  It also took into consideration the significant educational disadvantage experienced by Traveller and Roma learners and of students residing in direct provision or emergency homeless accommodation.

The Pobal HP Deprivation index is used by number of State agencies for the identification of disadvantage, in order to target resources towards communities most in need. The Index is a method of measuring the relative affluence or disadvantage of a particular geographical area using data returned from the national census. Variables used in the compilation of the HP Index include those related to demographic growth, dependency ratios, education levels, single parent rate, overcrowding, social class, occupation and unemployment rates. This data is combined with student enrolment data supplied by schools on the school enrolment databases (POD and PPOD), anonymised and aggregated to small area, to provide information on the relative level of concentrated disadvantage present in the pupil cohort of individual schools.

A detailed paper on the refined DEIS identification model is available on gov.ie at www.gov.ie/en/publication/a3c9e-extension-of-deis-to-further-schools/#how-schools-were-selected-for-inclusion-in-deis.

It is important to note that the extension of the DEIS programme to new schools is just one phase of work in my vision for an inclusive education system which supports all learners to achieve their potential. The next phase of work will explore the allocation of resources to schools to tackle educational disadvantage. Part of this programme of work will involve consultation with all relevant stakeholders.