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 the universal supports available to all schools, the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) Programme is a key policy initiative of my Department to address concentrated educational disadvantage at school level in a targeted and equitable way across the primary and post-primary sector.

The Home School Community Liaison (HSCL) scheme is a key support provided to urban primary schools and post-primary schools participating in the programme. The HSCL scheme seeks to promote partnership between parents, teachers and community family support services, with a view to supporting improved attendance, participation and retention. The scheme is delivered across almost 700 schools by 528 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.

Officials from my Department have engaged with the school referred and discussed the allocation model that is used to distribute HSCL coordinators to secondary schools within the scheme. My Department is currently undertaking a programme of review work which will consider the allocation of resources, including HSCL coordinators, to schools to ensure that all children at risk of educational disadvantage can be supported to achieve their potential through education. No changes to the current HSCL allocations are planned ahead of this review work being completed. However, the feedback received from the school will be considered and the school will be invited, along with other relevant stakeholders, to participate in the consultation process.

My Department is committed to achieving its vision for an inclusive education system which supports all learners to achieve their potential. That is why my Department is undertaking a programme of work to explore the allocation of resources to schools to address educational disadvantage. To support this work my Department have invited the OECD Strength Through Diversity: Education for Inclusive Societies Project to review the current policy approach for the allocation of resources to support students at risk of educational disadvantage in Ireland. This review will provide an independent expert opinion on the current resource allocation model for the DEIS programme and, drawing on international examples, inform a policy approach for an equitable distribution of supplementary resources to support students at risk of educational disadvantage attending all schools, both DEIS and non-DEIS. The OECD estimates that the review will be completed in Q2 2024.