Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 23 June 2020
132. Deputy Frankie Feighan asked the Minister for Education and Skills if the information technology grant allocation for a school (details supplied) will be investigated and reassessed to take into consideration the fact that there are more pupils in the school than accounted for by his Department; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11732/20]
View answerAs part of the implementation of the Digital Strategy for Schools 2015-2020 Enhancing Teaching Learning and Assessment, funding of €210m for ICT Infrastructure will be distributed to schools over the five years of the Strategy. €110m has issued over the lifetime of the strategy to date with €40m recently issuing in the form of a grant payment to all eligible schools and a further €10m top-up funding issued to all schools to enable schools to support any of their students experiencing difficulty in engaging with remote learning.
In the context of the current public health crisis the funding can be focussed on assisting schools to address ICT needs including devices, software and other ICT solutions to support the provision of remote learning. This can include the purchase of ICT devices that can be shared with students who do not have access to devices, essential learning platforms and other ICT infrastructure to support the provision of remote learning.
The Digital Strategy for school’s ICT grant is calculated based on the school’s enrolment at the end of September from the previous school year. Under the terms of this funding, as outlined in circular 0031/2020, all students following primary and post-primary programmes reckon for per capita purposes in recognised primary, special and post-primary schools.
The ICT Grant does not include PLC programmes, as these are funded as part of further education. The funding issued in respect of the 2019-2020 school year is subject to this criteria.
Full details regarding the funding are set out in Circulars 0031/2020 (€40m funding) and 0032/2020 (€10m funding) which are available on the Department’s website at https://www.education.ie/en/Circulars-and-Forms/Circulars-and-Forms/.
As the Deputy may be aware, the Post Leaving Certificate (PLC) programme is the largest of the full time Further Education and Training (FET) programmes with over 30,000 PLC places available annually. PLC provision is planned at a national level by SOLAS.
