Given the current economic climate and the target to reduce public expenditure, prioritising and maintaining resources for children at risk of educational disadvantage is a significant challenge. The current priority for my Department is to maintain existing supports for schools catering for the most concentrated levels of educational disadvantage. This means that there is no capacity for the present for additionality to the DEIS programme.
An overall report on the learning from the implementation of DEIS is currently being prepared by the Economic and Social Research Institute. This report will incorporate information contained in the findings from the DEIS research and evaluations conducted by the Educational Research Centre and the Department's inspectorate to date. It will also review other Irish and international related research on educational disadvantage. The report will assess the main findings of the evaluations and provide advice to inform future policy direction on educational disadvantage, including DEIS. This report is currently being finalised and I expect to receive it shortly.
Accordingly, for the present, my focus and that of my Department is on taking the learning from DEIS and applying it to future policy making. This will ensure that future policy direction to tackle educational disadvantage will be evidence-based and grounded in the solid body of experience provided by the DEIS programme.
