Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 25 July 2023
508. Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin asked the Minister for Education the projected cost of a 10% increase in funding for the school completion programme; the current financial and staff commitments in 2021-22 and 2022-23; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [37016/23]
View answerSince 1st January 2021, responsibility for the administration of the School Completion Programme (SCP), transferred back from the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to my Department.
The School Completion Programme, (SCP) is funded by my Department via Tulsa’s Education Support Service (TESS) and is a central element of the DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) programme, a key policy initiative of my Department to address educational disadvantage at school level.
The total allocation of SCP funding for 2023 is €34m.
Since I took over responsibility for the SCP in January 2021, an additional allocation of €2.3m was provided for the programme as part of Budget 2021 measures. The increasing of the SCP full year budget to €27m from 2022, encompassed the extension of SCP to an additional 28 schools and incorporated a 5% increase in budget to SCP funding overall.
From September 2022, an additional €4 million (€5.9 million full year) was provided to allow access to SCP to new DEIS urban primary and post-primary schools under the recent DEIS expansion. A further increase of 5% for SCP was negotiated under Budget 2023.
This increase in funding shows my consistent commitment to ensure the provision of vital supports to children and young people at risk of early school leaving.
TESS have operational responsibility for the SCP, with Local Projects operating under the management and direction of a Local Management Committee (LMC). The LMC is responsible for the oversight of the project delivery at local level, including the use of project resources and accountability for public funds.
My Department is continuing to undertake work towards achieving its vision for an inclusive education system which supports all learners to achieve their potential. It also recognises that we need to target resources to those schools who need them most. That is why my Department has undertaken a programme of work to explore the allocation of resources to schools to address educational disadvantage. To support this work my Department have invited the OECD Strength Through Diversity: Education for Inclusive Societies Project to review the current policy approach for the allocation of resources to support students at risk of educational disadvantage in Ireland.
This review will provide an independent expert opinion on the current resource allocation model for the DEIS programme, which includes the SCP and, drawing on international examples, inform a policy approach for an equitable distribution of supplementary resources to support students at risk of educational disadvantage attending all schools, both DEIS and non-DEIS.
