Written answers
Wednesday, 17 January 2024
Department of Education and Skills
School Funding
Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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654. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to list all of the schools awarded STEM grants in 2023, by county and school type, that is rural, urban and DEIS; the reason she feels a lottery system to allocate the funding was appropriate, given the time and effort required to submit applications; the reason her Department did not select roll numbers at random to avoid schools wasting time with an application process when the applications were not selected on merit; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [1565/24]
Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that the successful schools were detailed in the press release of the 20thDecember 2023 www.gov.ie/en/press-release/806d0-minister-for-education-announces-trebling-of-budget-for-stem-grants-for-schools-to-47-million/.I have attached the list of schools for your information.
The split between DEIS and non-DEIS of the successful schools is as follows;
| DEIS | Primary | Post- Primary |
|---|---|---|
| Urban | 44 | 9 |
| Rural | 78 | 15 |
| Non DEIS | Primary | Post- Primary |
|---|---|---|
| Urban | 114 | 45 |
| Rural | 206 | 20 |
When the grant scheme was announced the Department indicated that it had funding of €1.5m available. There was phenomenal demand from schools with around 3,000 applications received. In order to determine the number of valid applications those received after the deadline were discounted. Every other application received before 5pm on the 30th of November was read and saved, leaving 2,727 schools with an ask amounting to over €25m.
Given the very high number of valid applications and the budget available for the scheme, a decision was made by the Department to run a lottery, where a random number generator was used to pick out schools based on their line on the spreadsheet. The application for each school was then assessed on case by case basis with the applications read again by the evaluation team, to ensure they met the requirements as set out in the grant call. Any school deemed not to have met the requirements was removed. The procedure was then repeated until all the budget available was allocated.
The initial funding available at the time of call for applications was €1.5m. The Department worked to secure as much additional funding as possible, which amounted to €4.7m. Unfortunately, on this occasion, this additional funding fell short of the asks of over €25m. The Department is front loading the grant scheme in 2023/2024 school year and it is hoped that a further round of funding can be run this year. It means that eligible schools that were not successful in 2023 may receive funding in the future.
There was limited budget allocated to this grant scheme and all that money has been allocated. In relation to any future funding that becomes available, the Department will be in contact with schools
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