DEIS school request made for St Anne’s

COUCILLOR John Paul O’Shea has added his voice in making representations to the Minister for Education Norma Foley for the inclusion of St. Anne’s Primary School Charleville in the DEIS programme for the school year 2020/21.

Meetings with other local representatives had earlier taken place with the school’s board of management resulting in a similar request being made to the minister.

St. Anne’s Primary School teaches girls from 2nd class to 6th class and receives girls from St. Joseph’s Infant School in Charleville who already have DEIS status. It is completely wrong to have these girls, who are availing of the services that accompany the DEIS status in St. Joseph’s Infant School, and this support is no longer available to them once they reach 2nd class. It is imperative that Minister Foley adds St. Anne’s Primary School in Charleville to the list of DEIS Schools and allow these children the opportunity for the same level of education right throughout their educational career.

The Principal and staff in St. Anne’s Primary School want to embrace the DEIS Status and are eager to engage with the Department on this issue.

The abbreviation DEIS stands for Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools – which is the Action Plan for Educational Inclusion, which was launched in 2006.

The plan for 2017 replaced the 2005 plan and sets out a vision for future intervention in the critical area of social inclusion in education policy and remains the Department of Education and Skills policy instrument to address educational disadvantage.

The action plan focuses on addressing and prioritizing the educational needs of children and young people from disadvantaged communities, from pre-school through second-level education (3 to 18 years).

A total of 890 schools were included in the programme in the 2019/20 school year. These compromise 692 primary schools (334 urban and 358 rural) and 198 post primary schools. We await the decision for the 2020/21 School Year.

The minister’s reply to Cllr O’Shea states that the department is in the final stages of refining the new DEIS model based on the school enrolment data and that of the latest Census 2016 using the HP deprivation index. The work is at an advanced stage and a consultation process with the education stakeholders has commenced.

“It is envisaged that this will provide the basis for development of a DEIS resource allocation system to match identified need,” said the minister.