Schools in areas where children are at the highest risk of disadvantage will benefit from enhanced funding and staffing supports under a new “Deis-plus” programme.
Minister for Education Helen McEntee will on Monday announce details of the new scheme, which aims to boost literacy and numeracy with targeted supports.
The number of schools that stand to benefit, and the extent of additional funding and supports for individual schools, has yet to be finalised, however.
Ms McEntee will also pledge to tackle a fall-off in school attendance which has emerged as an issue since the Covid-19 pandemic.
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She plans to expand the Home School Community Liaison Scheme, a system that supports students with poor attendance at school or who are at risk of leaving school early.
The proportion of pupils missing 20 or more days of school at primary level has more than doubled from 11 per cent before the pandemic to 25 per cent in the 2022/23 school year. Absenteeism rates are higher again for schools in disadvantaged areas, where 42 per cent of primary pupils missed 20 school days or more.
Ms McEntee’s pledge to increase supports for pupils at risk follows a programme for government commitment on introducing a Deis-plus scheme aimed at providing more help for schools with the highest concentrations of disadvantage students.
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The €180 million-a-year Deis (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) programme provides additional supports, such as smaller class sizes and extra resources, to about 260,000 students across 360 schools with high concentrations of disadvantage.
Schools are selected for inclusion on the basis of deprivation indicators in their local areas. However, the system has faced criticism from those in the most disadvantaged areas who argue that funding levels are insufficient to meet the scale of challenges facing pupils.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said the Minister is considering enhanced funding, staffing supports and priority access to wellbeing supports as part of the new Deis-plus scheme.
She said Ms McEntee will engage with key stakeholders in the development of the scheme with a view to addressing student retention until the Leaving Cert and ultimately improving progression rates into higher and further education and the world of work.
The Minister wants a new Deis plan to include building stronger links with further and higher education and into the world of work. This would involve a focus on career guidance, as well as developing placements and work experience.
Conor McCarthy, principal of Tallaght Community National School, and a campaigner for Deis-plus scheme, sad he was “delighted” to see a “firm commitment” to such a system.
“The announcement of Deis-plus recognises the intergenerational deprivation that exists in small pockets of our country,” he said.
“Our group of principals from west Tallaght, Ballymun and Darndale have consistently highlighted the need to introduce supports in the form of staffing, funding and building space which address childhood trauma through nurture practices and the need for multidisciplinary therapists on the ground in our schools working with children.”
He said targeted supports will have the biggest impact in improving literacy and numeracy in our schools.
“Children from disadvantaged backgrounds who are supported through trauma-informed practices, who are receiving therapeutic and counselling intervention will be able to access the literacy and numeracy programmes already in place.”
He said planning for the new scheme needs to involve school leaders who, he said, were best placed to “identify the supports that will make the biggest differences in the lives and education of the children in their schools”.
