Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 20 March 2024
398. Deputy Michael Lowry asked the Minister for Education the reason a lottery was held when the number of applications for the STEM grant exceeded expectations; if she will point to the relevant area in the documentation issued to schools prior to the competition, where it states that a lottery would take place if the number of applications passed a certain threshold; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [11861/24]
View answerI can advise the Deputy that the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) grant scheme was an action in the new STEM Education Implementation Plan published in 2023. The grant was to support schools in carrying out projects to stimulate an increased interest in STEM and included an application process as with other STEM initiatives in the past such as the STEM clusters project.
The grant scheme was announce on 6th November 2023 with an initial closing date of 27th November 2023. The closing date was subsequently extended to 30th November 2023. When the grant scheme was announced the Department indicated that it had funding of €1.5m available. There was a phenomenal demand from schools with around 3,000 applications received. Every application received by the deadline of 5pm on the 30th November was read and processed, leaving 2,727 schools with an ask amounting of over €25m.
Given the very high number of valid applications received and the budget available for the scheme, a decision was made by the Department to run the lottery. The application for each school was then assessed on a case by case basis with the applications read again by the evaluation team, to ensure they met the requirements as set out in the grant call. Any school deemed not to have met the requirements was removed. The procedure was then repeated until all the budget available was allocated.
My Department is front loading the grant scheme in 2023/2024 school year and it is hoped that a further round of funding can be run this year. This means that eligible schools that were not successful this time may receive funding in the future.
I am aware of the time and effort that was put in by schools the application process and the frustration felt by the schools however there was limited money available to my Department. The Department will be in contact with schools in relation to any future funding that becomes available.
