Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 24 October 2018
158. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Education and Skills the outcome, including scoring, of the assessment which was carried out in respect of a school (details supplied) in County Donegal as part of the review of the DEIS scheme and subsequent DEIS Plan 2017 in which 79 additional schools were conferred with DEIS status in order to determine eligibility for DEIS supports; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44019/18]
Amharc ar fhreagra159. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Education and Skills the outcome, including scoring, of the assessment which was carried out in respect of a school (details supplied) in County Donegal as part of the review of the DEIS scheme and subsequent DEIS Plan 2017 in which 79 additional schools were conferred with DEIS status in order to determine eligibility for DEIS supports; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44020/18]
Amharc ar fhreagra160. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Education and Skills the outcome, including scoring, of the assessment which was carried out in respect of a school (details supplied) in County Donegal as part of the review of the DEIS scheme and subsequent DEIS Plan 2017 in which 79 additional schools were conferred with DEIS status in order to determine eligibility for DEIS supports; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44021/18]
Amharc ar fhreagra161. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Education and Skills the outcome, including scoring, of the assessment which was carried out in respect of a school (details supplied) in County Donegal as part of the review of the DEIS scheme and subsequent DEIS Plan 2017 in which 79 additional schools were conferred with DEIS status, in order to determine eligibility for DEIS supports; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44022/18]
Amharc ar fhreagraI propose to take Questions Nos. 158 to 161, inclusive, together.
I wish to advise the Deputy that schools newly included in DEIS from February 2017 are only those with the highest levels of concentrated disadvantage. Schools which were not included, including those referred to by the Deputy, are those who have not been identified as being in that category.
In line with the stated aim of making the new DEIS identification model more transparent, it would be the intention of my Department to make available to all schools, in the interest of full transparency, information relating to their school’s concentrated level of disadvantage. It is important that this is given some further consideration and my Department would welcome the view of its partners in this regard in due course following the outcome of the quality assurance process.
However it is important to note that it is not proposed to publish this information generally as there is a significant risk that this would allow crude comparisons to be drawn in terms of relative levels of disadvantage in schools. This would be highly divisive; unfair to parents, students and communities; place schools in an invidious position; and be contrary to the public interest.
Eircode functionality is currently being encoded on the relevant databases within my Department and an independent accredited encoder, Gamma Autoaddress, have been contracted to provide the necessary services to facilitate this. Work on this project is well underway. The intention is that the encoding process will provide either an Eircode or a small area code for more than 80% of pupils. It is anticipated that following the required testing and a communications process with schools, full functionality and application should be possible by the end of Q1 2019.
In order to ensure the quality of the address data and conduct further analysis, it is not my intention to extend the DEIS programme to any further schools until this work is complete.
