Paul Bradford
Question:108 Mr. Bradford asked the Minister for Education if a school (details supplied) in County Cork will qualify for disadvantaged status. [18900/96]
Written Answers. - Disadvantaged Area Status.
I have no proposals at present to extend disadvantaged area status to additional primary schools. The Deputy may be aware that I recently launched an important new initiative which seeks to break the cycle of educational disadvantage in selected urban and rural areas.
This initiative is based on the outcome of detailed studies of educational disadvantage conducted by the combat poverty agency and the education research centre. Among the findings of these studies was a recommendation that a more targeted approach be adopted, with resources being directed towards the most disadvantaged urban and rural areas. The studies also concluded that disadvantaged area supports should be confined to 16 per cent of the school-going population. In this connection, it was noted that the disadvantaged area scheme already extends to more than 17 per cent of pupils.
Under the "Breaking the Cycle" initiative, a targeted programme of special supports is being made available to selected urban and rural schools. In the case of urban schools, the focus was on schools which already had disadvantaged area status and were located in the urban areas of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford.
The second element of the initiative focused on schools from all parts of the country with fewer than five teachers and particularly schools in rural areas which serve dispersed populations and which have concentrations of children who are at risk of not reaching their potential in the school system.
All eligible schools, including the school mentioned by the Deputy, were invited by the education research centre to complete a detailed, questionnaire devised by the centre and aimed at identifying the relative levels of disadvantage between applicant schools. In particular, every school was requested to provide data relating to the pupils in its intake class under a range of objective criteria.
The education research centre reviewed all applicants and selected schools for inclusion in the scheme on the basis of the data submitted by schools. Unfortunately, based on the data it submitted to the education research centre, the school in question did not rate high enough on the priority list to be selected for inclusion under the new initiative.