Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 6 July 2021
302. Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív asked the Minister for Education when the review of the DEIS scheme commenced; the progress made to date with this review; when decisions will be made on the future of this scheme; if other schools will be admitted to it; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36114/21]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe DEIS Plan published in 2017 sets out the vision for interventions in the critical area of educational disadvantage policy and was based on the findings of an extensive review of the DEIS programme, which involved consultations with all relevant stakeholders.
A key part of the DEIS Plan was the introduction of a new DEIS identification process based on an objective, statistics based model to determine which schools merit inclusion in the programme. Following the application of this model in 2017, a further 79 schools were included in the DEIS programme and 30 schools were upgraded from Band 2 to Band 1 status.
The DEIS Plan acknowledged that further work was required to refine the model and therefore, in terms of the further extension of the DEIS Programme to more schools, an extensive body of work has been undertaken in terms of the refinement of this model. This is based on the latest school enrolment data and data available from Census 2016 under the HP Deprivation Index. A detailed quality analysis of the data has been carried out by members of the DEIS Technical Group which contains representatives of the Department’s Statistics and Social Inclusion Units, the Inspectorate and the Educational Research Centre. My Department has commenced a consultation process with education stakeholder representatives on the refinement of the model, and work is now ongoing on final elements of the model.
It is envisaged that this will provide the basis for the development and application of a refined DEIS resource allocation model to ultimately match resources to identified need. Until this work is complete, it is not intended to extend the DEIS programme to any further schools.
