Rose Conway-Walsh on Roxboro School's DEIS Exclusion

Minister, I've raised the unsustainable situation at Roxburgh National School in Ballinrobe with your office numerous times since last November and I visited the school myself and spoken with the management there and seen the urgent need for additional resources and that's why I was extremely disappointed to hear from the school that the school have been excluded from the GESH programme. Minister, could you please explain to the school community of Roxburgh National School why they have been excluded from GESH and GESH Plus despite the obvious resource pressures that this particular school is facing? Thank you Deputy for your question. So ensuring that every child and young person can reach their full potential is a key priority for me as Minister and for my department. The GESH programme and the new GESH Plus scheme which will begin this year as part of the GESH strategy out to 2035, they're key initiatives in my department's approach to addressing educational disadvantage. Schools were identified for inclusion in the GESH and GESH Plus programme using refined rules-based approaches built on nationally available pupil level administrative data that is applied consistently across all schools across the country. The GESH identification process is based on the principle of concentrated disadvantage and the proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds within a school. The GESH identification process is based on the HP deprivation index assigned to the area where individual students reside and on traveller and Roma ethnicity. It's important to also stress that although a school is not included in the GESH or the GESH Plus programme, it doesn't by any way in any way imply that my department is saying that disadvantage does not exist within that school community and I absolutely recognise the important role that schools like Roxburgh National School in Ballinroe play in supporting children and the staff, the leadership within schools like that, the support that they provide to children who reside in, for example, international protection accommodation and that is why under the GESH strategy 2035, my department's long-term vision to address additional educational disadvantage in all schools, I announced a pilot scheme to extend the home school liaison community post provision to schools outside of the GESH programme that have significant cohorts of children who are at risk of educational disadvantage or who are from new communities and Roxburgh National School Ballinrobe is one of those 130 schools that will be supported under this scheme and any future allocation of resources to address educational disadvantage in schools will be considered over the lifetime of the GESH strategy out to 2035 and in the context of available resources. Go raibh maith agat. Minister, I'll outline to you now how Roxburgh more than meets the criteria for the GESH status. It's a two-teacher rural primary school serving one of the most diverse and disadvantaged school populations in the country. The school currently has 35 pupils. 17 of these pupils are from the Irish Traveller community. 18 of those pupils are either from the IPAS system, a refugee, homeless or living in emergency accommodation. Three children have moderate learning difficulties and 31 to 35 require daily special education teaching supports. Due to the diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds of the families within the school community, parent contribution funding is non-existent. There is no functioning parents association and the school is really struggling to maintain a board of management. This all adds to the strain on the already stretched and struggling teaching staff there. I do want to acknowledge the department's efforts thus far to assist the school. The school has been told that they've been added to the HSCL scheme earlier this year, however that won't even scratch the surface. Thank you. The GESH plus strategy was a commitment in the programme for government and this was to target areas across the country where there was really high risks of educational disadvantage. The evidence from international assessments on literacy and numeracy finds that Ireland has a very high performance, performs very highly comparatively to other OECD or EU averages, but the assessment also finds that there are gaps remaining in relation to outcomes for children from areas of high deprivation and that was reinforced by the 2024 review of resourcing schools to address educational disadvantage in Ireland. That recommended the need for a higher level of support for a small cohort of schools supporting the highest concentrations of children and young people at risk of educational disadvantage and that was the purpose of this GESH plus strategy. But I absolutely hear what you're saying and there are other schools across the country who are not GESH who felt and who know that they have educational disadvantage and children and young people at risk within their own schools and that's why I set up that pilot specifically for schools like Roxburgh National School in Ballinrobe to give them access to a homeschool liaison position. We will be looking at this GESH plus strategy, how that's been rolled out and I would like to make it more flexible. Minister, I think there must be a way of, you know, we have transition funding in different countries and all that integration funding that can be used for other places. When we have extreme cases like this the management fear that the inclusion on the scheme that you talk about would lead to Roxburgh's exclusion from GESH which has now come to pass despite every other school in their HSCL cluster having GESH or GESH plus status. Now both I and the school management are really struggling to understand how a school like Roxburgh with such a significant and concentrated need has been left out of the GESH scheme. Now in a letter to your office, from your office to the school on May the 21st you acknowledge in writing the level of disadvantage experienced at Roxburgh yet the school is still excluded from GESH. This is an exceptional school that needs the help so I really need you to outline a clear pathway for Roxburgh to achieve GESH status, not in the long term because in the long term all these kids will be gone and they will have been failed by the system because we're not targeting the investment where it's needed. Thank you Deputy and it is because the commitment of the program for government was for the GESH plus strategy, those with you know areas of most severe educational disadvantage and that is why I set up a pilot specifically for schools that are not in GESH, understanding the needs that are out there and I will be looking at that to see into the future what more we can do and what more supports we can provide for schools across the country. Just to say in relation to the data and this is data that is applied right across the country and nationally available data and also enrolment data coming from our schools, from the POD system, from the PPOD system, from our post-primary schools, so priority and weighting was given to schools where there was a high level of unemployment, where there was a high level of ROMA, traveller children within those schools or students, lone parents were part of that as well, so this we have to make sure that we're looking as was nationally available data to the HP deprivation index and also we will be working as well with the CSO and making sure that we are refining that data that is coming to us specifically in relation to schools across the country and the enrolment data that schools are providing as well. Thank you.