asked the Minister for Education if he will give specific details of the allocation of the special fund for the disadvantaged.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Schools in Disadvantaged Areas.
26.
A total of £750,000 is being provided this year for a programme of special measures for primary schools in disadvantaged urban areas. The special measures from which participating schools benefit include grants for the purchase of books and equipment, the sponsorship of home-school-community liaison initiatives and special in-service training for the teachers in the schools concerned. A total of £500,000 has been allocated towards these measures in 1986. In addition, funds have also been provided for the relief of school debts and also for pre-schools for travellers' children. The allocation of the available funds for 1986 is as follows:
|
Relief of school debts |
£200,000 |
|
Grants for books and equipment |
£276,000 |
|
Sponsorship of home-school-community liaison initiatives |
£207,000 |
|
In-service training |
£17,000 |
|
Pre-school for travellers' children |
£20,000 |
|
Printing of curricular materials |
£7,000 |
|
Free books scheme for necessitous pupils |
£18,000 |
|
Contingencies |
£5,000 |
Will the Minister give details of the schools in receipt of these moneys under the various categories listed by him?
The best thing would be to send the Deputy a list of the schools.
Are the schools mainly in urban areas?
Yes. Essentially, they are in Dublin, Limerick and Cork with one or two outside those areas. At the moment the Dublin area is receiving the bulk of the funds.
Recently there has been much publicity about many city schools who are facing extreme difficulty because of the lack of funds. Question No. 23 dealt with one such school. The Minister mentioned a sum of £200,000 in respect of the relief of school debts but I say that amount is a drop in the ocean. For many schools because their pupils come from a particular background they cannot have the usual cake sales, bingo sessions and all the attendant activities that must be held nowadays to run a school satisfactorily. Indeed, many of those activities serve as a community focal point and they are good in themselves. However, because of the areas in which the schools mentioned in this question are sited, the boards cannot raise the necessary funds and the principals are becoming more and more harassed and bothered about the business end of trying to make ends meet. They cannot devote all their time and talents to dealing with the educational needs of their pupils.
The Deputy should not make a speech on every supplementary question.
It was for those reasons the Government introduced this scheme of assistance for disadvantaged areas and, for those reasons, in a time of economic stringency the amount was increased from £500,000 last year to £750,000 this year. Obviously we would like to give even more. Nevertheless I am satisfied that the assistance given is of extreme importance to the schools for the socio-economic reasons advanced by the Deputy. The sum for the relief of school debts has been calculated as a proportion of the entire sum available, taking into account the Department's knowledge of this aspect of the problem of the disadvantaged.