Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 7 February 2024
186. Deputy Paul Kehoe asked the Minister for Education the person or body that has oversight of school completion programmes in DEIS schools; the budgets that were unspent under the SCP over the last five years; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [5143/24]
View answerThe School Completion Programme, (SCP) is funded by my Department via Tulsa 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.
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 percent 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 percent for SCP was negotiated under Budget 2023.
The total allocation of SCP funding for 2023 was €34m.
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 made available by my Department through TESS.
In SCP there are no held budgets that were unspent over the last 5 years. Officials from TESS have advised that where the SCP project budget has not been fully spent, consideration is given to repurposing of funding to meet identified needs of children and young people at local level.
Where this is not possible, funding may be recouped and redistributed across all projects nationally to resource identified emerging needs. In 2023 these funds issued to all SCPs for the provision of wellbeing and school attendance initiatives under SCP.
