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. Participation in school activities such as drama, music, and educational and cultural school trips is an important factor in the education of children and young people in Ireland.

Building on the success of the Creative Ireland Programme 2017-2022, the Government extended the programme for another five years to 2027. As one of the 5 Pillars of the Programme, the cross Departmental new Creative Youth Plan 2023-2027, which was launched in March last year, will further embed and integrate creativity in all its different forms to support the hardest to reach children and young people. The Creative Youth Plan is designed to enable the creative potential of every child and young person.

The new Creative Youth Plan provides everyone from birth to 24 years with even more opportunities to experience and to enjoy all that art and creativity can bring. Within the Department of Education, programmes such as BLAST and Creative Clusters are key in-school programmes developed under Creative Youth and have shown us the benefits creative engagement can bring for children and young people.

In October I announced the latest updates to BLAST and Creative Clusters as part of the Creative Youth Plan 2023 – 2027.

Creative Clusters is an initiative of my Department, led by and in partnership with the Education Support Centres Ireland (ESCI). Creative Clusters provide schools with access to creative people, skills and resources that will support them to draw on their own skills and experiences and those within their wider communities.

In October I was also pleased to announce that 425 schools have been selected to take part in the BLAST 2023 initiative under the Creative Youth Pillar of the Creative Ireland Programme. I welcome these schools into the new initiative in 2023 which brings live arts to students and teachers. To date over 1,500 schools have successfully applied for a BLAST residency since its inception in 2021.

The BLAST initiative will provide additional opportunities for schools to collaborate with established artists and creatives, supporting our children and young people to collaborate and engage in creative and critical thinking, all crucial skills for their futures. The aim of this scheme is to give pupils in schools all over the country the opportunity to work with a professional artist on unique projects. These bespoke residency projects will be originated and planned between the artist, teacher and the school under the coordination of the ESCI network of 21 full-time Education Centres. Each residency is worth €1,100 which is fully funded by the Department of Education and the local Education Centre will pay the Artist for a 20-hour residency which will be delivered throughout the academic year, from September 2023. I look forward to seeing how these exciting artist in residency opportunities in schools develop over the coming year.

The primary Arts Education curriculum is for all children from junior infants to sixth class and consists of three subjects: Music, Drama and Visual arts. The curriculum enables children to explore and express ideas, feelings and experiences through music, drama and the visual arts.

The current curriculum was introduced as part of the Primary School Curriculum (1999). The primary curriculum is under review and redevelopment with the Primary Curriculum Framework published in March 2023. The new Arts Education specification is under development which is subject to robust research and consultation. A public consultation on the arts specification along with other specifications for the primary curriculum will commence in spring 2024. It is expected that the specifications will be introduced into schools in the 2025/2026 school year.

DEIS is the main policy initiative of my Department to tackle educational disadvantage at school level. Schools in the DEIS Programme are required to develop and implement three-year improvement plans as a condition of their participation in DEIS. Targets are set under key themes, such as attendance, retention, progression, literacy and numeracy, partnership, transition, wellbeing and examination attainment (post-primary).

My Department spends €180m annually in supporting schools in the DEIS programme, of which, over €20m is allocated to schools by way of a DEIS grant.

The DEIS grant should be utilised to attain the targets set in the school's three year improvement plan across the DEIS themes. It is a matter for the Board of Management of each school to allocate DEIS grant funding so that it targets those students deemed most in need. This may include allocating a proportion of the DEIS grant funding towards the cost of school activities such as drama, music, educational and cultural school trips.

My Department recognises the crucial role that regular school attendance plays in achieving educational and social inclusion. With this understanding, I announced the Attendance Campaign Support Grant for the academic year 2023/24. This grant is a once-off payment provided to all primary and post-primary schools across Ireland last October.

The objective of this grant is to bolster the National School Attendance Campaign run by my Department. The grant has a dual focus: it aims to enhance regular school attendance while also targeting individuals and groups at higher risk of educational disadvantage due to poor attendance records.

Schools have the flexibility to use this grant within the current academic year or spread it over a longer period to align with their individual School Self-Evaluation Report and Improvement Plan or their DEIS Action Plan for Improvement. This could involve early years settings, primary schools, and post-primary schools working together to address issues related to attendance, especially among children and young people at risk of educational disadvantage. This may include allocating a proportion of the Attendance Support Grant funding towards the cost of school activities such as drama, music, educational and cultural school trips.

The Attendance Support Grant is designed to address attendance issues in a targeted and equitable manner. The progressive universalism inherent in its allocation ensures that while all schools benefit, those with the greatest needs receive the most support. This grant is a testament to my Department's ongoing commitment to fostering an education system where every child has an equal opportunity to achieve their potential.

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The area of wellbeing and the promotion of positive mental health is a priority for the Department of Education. The Department of Education’s approach to supporting wellbeing and mental health is set out in its Wellbeing Policy Statement and Framework for Practice.

The approach in the Wellbeing Policy is founded on research and best international practice in relation to how schools can best support the wellbeing and mental health of children and young people. The approach proposed is a whole school and preventative approach which has multiple components that include:

Providing children and young people with opportunities to build core social and emotional skills and competencies

• Providing children and young people with opportunities to experience supportive relationships within the school setting and to learn through those relationships
• Providing children and young people with opportunities to be part of a school environment and culture that feels both physically and psychologically safe, an environment in which children and young people feel a sense of belonging and connectedness, in which they feel their voice is heard, and they feel supported.
• Schools are encouraged to use a reflective, school self-evaluation approach to identify and prioritise the needs of its own school community in relation to thepromotion of wellbeing and mental health, and to respond to meeting those needs.

A dedicated wellbeing portal can be accessed via ‘Wellbeing in Education’ on Gov.ie, bringing together all the wellbeing supports and resources that have been developed by the Department and the Department’s support services.

NEPS provides a comprehensive, school-based psychological service to all primary and post primary schools through the application of psychological theory and practice to support the wellbeing, academic, social and emotional development of all learners.

NEPS provides a casework service to schools through the assigned NEPS psychologist, Individual casework service involves a high level of psychologist collaboration with teachers and parents, often also working directly with the child/young person. NEPS may become involved with supporting individual students where the school’s SET team or Student Support Team (in post-primary) feels that the involvement of the psychologist is needed. Psychologists may provide consultation in relation to therapeutic informed approaches to be delivered in the school setting and engage in direct work with an individual student as appropriate. In the event that the need for a more targeted counselling or a specialised intervention is identified by the NEPS psychologist, a referral is made to an outside agency for evaluation and ongoing support. The NEPS psychologist can identify the most appropriate referral pathway and supports school with the onward referral to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Team (CAMHS), HSE Primary Care/Community Psychology teams, or an identified local community based specialist mental health service.

NEPS’ Support and Development work involves the provision of applied psychology services for teachers and school communities to build and maximise their capacity to respond to the needs of all students and those with particular needs.

The Department has been examining the matter of how NEPS can continue to recruit adequate numbers of suitably qualified psychologists and continue to respond to the educational psychological needs of children in recognised schools across the country in both primary and post-primary settings.

Since January of 2023, NEPS is supporting bursaries for students who are enrolled in the University College Dublin (UCD) Professional Doctorate in Educational Psychology and the Mary Immaculate College (MIC), Professional Doctorate in Educational and Child Psychology for Trainee Educational Psychologists. Those in receipt of a bursary commit to joining NEPS upon graduation. The Public Appointments Service (PAS) undertook a recruitment campaign for Educational Psychologists for NEPS in 2023 and a second recruitment campaign is currently open for 2024. Panels of psychologists have been created. There are currently 235 whole-time equivalent NEPS educational psychologists employed across the 8 NEPS regions, delivering a psychological service to our schools which will increase with the intake from the 2024 recruitment and bursary graduates joining the service in the years to come. The budget for the operation of NEPS is €31.7m.

As Minister for Education in June 2023, I announced the establishment of a programme of counselling and wellbeing/mental health supports to be piloted in over 650 primary schools across 10 counties and secured a commitment of €5million in Budget 2023. I was also pleased to announce funding in Budget 2024 to continue the counselling in primary school pilot, until June 2025.

The pilot project has two strands. Strand 1 comprises the provision of one-to-one counselling to support small numbers of children experiencing mild to moderate levels of emotional distress. All primary schools in counties Cavan, Laois, Leitrim, Longford, Mayo, Monaghan and Tipperary are included in the first strand of the pilot.

Strand 2 of the pilot comprises of 72 schools in Cork, Dublin 7, Dublin 16 and Carlow and will see the establishment of a new type of support from Education Wellbeing/Mental Health Teams for clusters of primary schools. This Strand will also see the introduction of Wellbeing Practitioners, who will work under the direction and supervision of NEPS.

The focus of the support to be provided under Strand 2 is on strengthening whole school preventative approaches. This includes the provision of psycho-education support for parents and teachers, and the provision of early intervention to groups of children or individual children with mild/emerging need, using low-level therapeutically-informed approaches.