Addressing educational disadvantage in all schools is a key priority for me as Minister for Education and Youth. A pilot project was recently introduced to extend Home-School-Community-Liaison (HSCL) provision to 130 schools that are in the DEIS Rural band and outside the DEIS programme. This pilot provides an important opportunity to trial the extension of this support to additional schools and to inform future policy development in relation to the scheme.
Schools included in the HSCL pilot project at this time are:
• DEIS Rural primary schools and urban primary schools not included in the DEIS programme that have the highest concentrations of children and young people at risk of educational disadvantage
• DEIS Rural primary schools and primary schools not included in the DEIS programme that have the highest proportions of children and young people from other countries and cultures
• Post-primary schools not included in the DEIS programme that have the highest concentrations of children and young people at risk of educational disadvantage and those with the highest proportions of children and young people from other countries and cultures
Other factors including operational clustering feasibility and regional capacity requirements were considered to ensure that the pilot project could be implemented at this time.
If a school has not been included in the recent HSCL pilot expansion it does not imply that educational disadvantage does not exist within its school community. The department recognises that some schools operate within complex local contexts and pressures which may not always be fully reflected in nationally available datasets used for pilot initiatives.
This pilot is provided in addition to the range of universal supports available to all schools to support children and young people at risk of educational disadvantage. These include:
• National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) provides educational psychological service to all primary and post-primary schools and special schools to support the well-being, academic, social and emotional development of all learners.
• The Special Education Teaching (SET) allocation provides a unified allocation for special education support teaching needs to each school based on each school’s educational profile and also encompasses an element of English as an additional language (EAL) support allocation. Under this SET model, schools are frontloaded with resources to provide support immediately to those pupils who need it without delay.
• Free schoolbooks are provided to all children and young people in the free education system.
• Inspectorate support helps improve education provision for all children and young people. They promote best practice and school improvement by advising teachers, principals and boards of management in schools.
• Through the Department of Social Protection, the School Meals Programme provides regular, nutritious food to children to support them in taking full advantage of the education provided to them. The Hot School Meals Programme is available to all primary schools, meaning that approximately 3,700 schools and organisations and 682,000 children are now eligible for the Schools Meals Programme.
The implementation and outcomes of the HSCL pilot project will continue to be monitored and evaluated to inform future planning. Any future allocation of resources, including any potential further extension of the pilot, will be considered over the lifetime of the DEIS Strategy to 2035 and in the context of available resources.
