Michael Ring
Question:644 Deputy Michael Ring asked the Minister for Education and Science to reconsider a decision on the removal of a person’s services from a school (details supplied) in County Mayo. [4888/09]
View answerTuesday, 10 February 2009
Questions (586)
Written answers
The school to which the Deputy refers is among schools that were judged by an independent identification process in 2005 not to have a sufficient level of disadvantage among their pupils to warrant their inclusion in DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunities in Schools), the Action Plan for educational inclusion. The next identification process is scheduled to be held at the end of the current DEIS programme which runs from 2005-2010. There will not be an opportunity before this to be included in the current DEIS programme of supports.
The school referred to retained resources, including financial and a shared Rural Coordinator post, under pre-existing schemes and programmes for addressing educational disadvantage. When DEIS was introduced, a commitment was given as a concessionary measure to these schools that they would retain a level of support for the duration of the DEIS Initiative.
While it is appreciated that the discontinuation of these resources will impact on this school, given the current volatile and challenging economic climate, difficult decisions had to be made in order to contain public sector spending. One of these decisions was to advance the withdrawal of such supports from all non DEIS schools to the beginning of the next school year.
The main focus of Social Inclusion measures will be to retain resources in DEIS schools. There is a need to focus targeted resources on the schools in most need and this approach is in line with the broad thrust of the recommendations of the Comptroller and Auditor General which are set out in his report on Primary Disadvantage of 2006, which recommended that my Department should focus its educational disadvantage measures on those schools serving the most disadvantaged communities.