Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 20 March 2024
399. Deputy Michael Lowry asked the Minister for Education what criteria, if any, applied to the reading of the application by a school (details supplied) for the STEM grant; if she will provide feedback to school management on the application and where it did not meet the criteria outlined to the school in documentation received from her Department; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [11862/24]
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.
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, including Drom National School, with an ask amounting of over €25m.
Given the very high number of valid applications and the budget available for the scheme, a decision was made by the Department to run a lottery, where a random number generator was used to pick out schools based on their line on the spreadsheet. 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.
Drom National School submitted a strong application as did many other schools. Unfortunately, the school did not come through the lottery system.
I am aware of the time and effort that was put in by schools to 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.
