SIX Limerick primary schools serving some of the most vulnerable communities in the city have been excluded from the DEIS Plus programme.
The programme is aimed at tackling educational disadvantage to schools with students at risk of poverty, social exclusion, and educational inequality.
Our Lady of Lourdes, St John’s Girls’ and Infant Boys’ School, St John the Baptist Boys’ National School, Presentation Primary School, CBS Primary School, and St Michael’s Infant School are all impacted.
Conor Sheehan, Labour TD for Limerick City, raised the matter in the Dáil during a topical issue debate with Minister for Education Hildegarde Naughton.
“There is a school on the left-hand side of the road in Limerick that has been included and meets the criteria as set out by the system but there is a school on the right-hand side of the road that does not when it essentially serves the same population and has the same issues,” Deputy Sheehan told the Minister.
“One school has now been given a leg up while the other has, unfortunately, been given a kick back. This needs to be addressed as part of the appeal process and the criteria in the selection of schools going forward.”
The Limerick TD told the Education Minister that “the exclusion of these schools reflects not a lack of need but a failure of the system to respond appropriately to that need”.
“The DEIS Plus identification model is too rigid. It does not consider the lack of services in areas of high socio-economic deprivation or the crippling and destructive impact for children, families, and communities of the many complex issues in these communities.
“It relies heavily on self-declared census data, and in many of these communities a high proportion of responses to the census return do not state certain details.
“We are falling short because the selection process fails to recognise the lived experience of poverty and disadvantage experienced by the children in these schools. In the appeals documentation the Department states that no additional data can be submitted on the appeals process. Therefore, appeals will be considered only on the DEIS Plus identification model. We need to find a way to make sure that schools like this are picked up by the DEIS plus identification model.”