Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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239. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the estimated cost of expanding the creative schools programme to benefit ten more schools. [38619/24]

Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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Creative Schools is a flagship initiative of the Creative Youth Plan 2023-2027, supporting schools to put the arts and creativity at the heart of children’s and young people’s lives. Since 2018, Creative Schools has supported schools over 2 years to develop and implement a bespoke Creative Schools plan. It is led by the Arts Council in partnership with my Department and the Department of Education. Access to the initiative is open to all primary and post-primary schools and Youthreach centres that are recognised and funded by the Department of Education, and that have not already participated in a previous round of Creative Schools.

For the 2024 school year, 184 new schools and centres have been invited to join Creative Schools. This is an increase of 43 compared to the 2023 intake and brings to over 1,100 the number of schools that have participated in the programme since it began in 2018. Schools cannot re-enter the initiative once they have participated, thereby encouraging the inclusion of new schools each year.

Each school participating in the initiative is provided with expert support from a Creative Associate assigned to work with them for up to nine days per year and a grant of €4,000 towards activities and projects over the two years.

For the 2022 intake, four schools joined the programme that are based in non-mainstream settings, attached to Special Care Units or Children Detention Centres. Similarly, in 2023 five Youth Encounter Project Schools (YEPs) joined the Creative Schools programme. Given the particular needs of these settings and the young people within them, they were offered an enhanced package of supports to include greater allocated time with a Creative Associate and an increased grant of €8,000 each over the two years.

The cost to grant 10 mainstream schools €4000 each would be €40,000 over two years. In addition, it would cost approximately €84,500 for 10 Creative Associates over 2 years. This is based on an allocation of 26 days in total (including training) for a non-teacher Creative Associate per school.

While the approximate cost for an additional 10 mainstream schools in Creative Schools totals €124,500 for 2 years, the Creative Schools initiative also incurs other administrative and operational costs. This includes within the Arts Council (e.g., project management team, evaluation and national celebration event) and the Department of Education (e.g., teacher substitution for training days) and thereby confounds a simple pro-rata extrapolation based on current baseline costs.

All funding through my Department relating to Creative Schools has been part of the Arts Council’s annual allocation, the management of which is a matter for the Council under the Arts Act 2003.