Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 30 January 2024
261. Deputy Alan Dillon asked the Minister for Education if she has any plans for a review of DEIS in secondary schools and whether the status of a school (details supplied) can be reassessed considering its recent amalgamation; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [3746/24]
View answerMy Department provides a wide range of supports to all schools, DEIS and non-DEIS, to support the inclusion of all students and address barriers to students achieving their potential.
Supplementing the universal supports available to all schools, the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) Programme is a key policy initiative of my Department to address concentrated educational disadvantage at school level in a targeted and equitable way across the primary and post-primary sector.
In general where a DEIS school is amalgamating with a non-DEIS school, the newly amalgamated post primary school will not continue to be included in the DEIS programme. The school will retain some DEIS supports for the students from the amalgamating DEIS school for a period. In the case of post-primary schools, this is six years. The purpose is to ensure that students who are currently enrolled in the DEIS school or whose parents had opted to enrol in the next September, prior to confirmation of amalgamation, continue to avail of DEIS supports until their post primary education is completed.
However, these resources would not be extended to the full enrolment of the amalgamated school. Schools are generally given notice by my Department ahead of the final year of retaining those supports.
The process whereby a school can retain some DEIS supports post amalgamation for a finite period, is separate to the identification of schools for the DEIS programme. The newly amalgamated school may be included in the DEIS programme in any further extension of the programme.
My Department recognises the need to target resources to those schools who need them most, the next phase of work will explore the allocation of resources to all schools to tackle educational disadvantage.
The DEIS Plan is based on the premise that in order to have the maximum possible impact on providing opportunities for students most at risk of educational disadvantage, then extra resources need to be targeted as closely as possible at those students with the greatest level of need. This will involve further development of the existing DEIS programme, to create a more dynamic resource allocation model where levels of resources more accurately follow the levels of need identified by objective data.
To support this work my Department has 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 is currently ongoing and the OECD team estimate that the review will be complete in Q2 of 2024. This review will provide an independent expert opinion on the current resource allocation model for the DEIS programme 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.
Following the National Census conducted in April 2022, an updated HP Deprivation Index has now been generated by Pobal. My Department is engaging with Pobal and this along with other available data will be thoroughly reviewed to inform future resource allocation aimed at tackling educational disadvantage.
