Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Home School Community Liaison (HSCL) scheme seeks to promote partnership between parents, teachers and community family support services, with a view to supporting improved attendance, participation and retention. A HSCL Coordinator is a teacher from a participating school who is released from teaching duties, for a maximum of five years, in order to work intensively with and support parents and guardians. The overarching goal of the HSCL Coordinator is to improve educational outcomes for children through their work with the key adults in the child’s life. HSCL is a school-based intervention provided to address the needs of students and their families in disadvantaged areas through acknowledging and developing the role of the parent as prime educator. This is achieved through targeting the families of students most at risk of educational disadvantage and putting in place a range of appropriate support interventions.

Currently, all DEIS Urban Primary and DEIS Post Primary schools are included in the HSCL Scheme, which serves 693 schools. The scheme is delivered by 530 full-time HSCL Coordinators who are teachers in these schools and assigned to HSCL duties either in individual schools or clusters of schools, catering for approximately 207,000 pupils.

In addition to the above;

- a pilot project to support Traveller and Roma pupils, under the National Traveller and Roma Inclusion Strategy, is in operation in 4 locations with 1 HSCL coordinator assigned in each location. The pilot project supports approximately 50 schools.

- under 2022 Dormant Accounts funding, secured to support attendance, participation and retention among Traveller and Roma students, my Department has allocated 10 HSCL Coordinators in 14 non-DEIS post-primary schools.

In March last year, I announced a major expansion of the DEIS programme which means that, for the first time since 2017 the programme was significantly expanded to an additional 322 schools. The programme now includes over 1,200 schools and supports approximately 240,000 students. This means 1 in 4 of all students are now supported in the programme.

This recent expansion will add an additional €32 million to my Department’s expenditure on the DEIS programme from 2023, bringing the overall Department of Education allocation for the programme to €180 million.

It is important to note that the recent extension of the DEIS programme to new schools is just one phase of work for an inclusive education system which supports all learners to achieve their potential. My Department recognises that there is a need to ensure that students at risk of educational disadvantage receive the supports they require. Conscious of this and recognising the need to target resources to those schools who need them most, 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 relevant stakeholders over the coming months.