Skip to main content
Normal View

DEIS Status

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 20 November 2018

Tuesday, 20 November 2018

Questions (234)

Pat the Cope Gallagher

Question:

234. Deputy Pat The Cope Gallagher asked the Minister for Education and Skills his plans to introduce a fairer system of designating DEIS status on schools; if his attention has been drawn to the fact that the current system does not allow for direct inputs from the school authorities or broader school community; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48336/18]

View answer

Written answers

DEIS Plan 2017 was the culmination of more than 18 months of consultation and discourse with education partners and other stakeholders to ensure that identification of schools and future delivery of interventions is fully informed by the practical experience of teachers, parents, students and non-governmental organisations working on behalf of children at risk of educational disadvantage and their families

As the Deputy is aware, my Department has introduced an objective, statistics based model for assessing which schools merit inclusion in the DEIS Programme, so that all stakeholders can have confidence that we are targeting extra resources at those schools with the highest levels of concentrated disadvantage.

A detailed document explaining the methodology used in the Identification process under DEIS plan 2017 is available on the Department’s website at https://www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Services/DEIS-Delivering-Equality-of-Opportunity-in-Schools-/DEIS-Identification-Process.pdf

DEIS Plan 2017 states that the improved data on the socio-demographic of schools resulting from the new identification model will have an impact not only on the assessment of schools for inclusion in the programme but also on the scaling of resources to allow for more graduated levels of support.  This in turn allows for the ultimate objective of allocating resources to best meet the identified need of individual schools.

In order to achieve this, the current identification model needs to be as accurate as possible and this will be facilitated by the use of Eircode to ensure correct inputting of addresses. This work is ongoing at present. Further analysis is also required to examine other variables known to be strong predictors of educational disadvantage in the context of resource allocation.  Therefore, in order to ensure the quality of the address data and conduct further analysis, it is not intended to extend the DEIS programme to any further schools until this work is complete.

Top
Share