Apart from the predictably warm response of the unions to the announcement of 450 additional teachers, the element of the Minister for Education's package on disadvantage that was greeted most enthusiastically was his pledge of more money for young people with disabilities.
Although £8 million of this had already been announced, there was a commitment of £3.4 million for escorts and safety harnesses for children with disabilities on school buses; a particular focus of the £1.2 million for special pre-White Paper initiatives in early childhood education will be disabled children; and there are pledges on equipment for special needs teachers and money for promoting access to third level for people with disabilities.
Mr Peter Archer, of the Conference of Religious of Ireland's education office, said it was a good idea to identify and keep separate the money allocated to this sector, traditionally one of the most underfunded in education.
He suggested that the major expansion in services resulting from the additional teacher appointments might be in remedial services rather than home-school liaison provision. However, he noted that most disadvantaged schools were already relatively well catered for by remedial teachers. The Kellaghan Report for the Combat Poverty Agency in 1995 estimated that a third of non-disadvantaged schools did not have remedial services, whereas less than 4 per cent of schools designated as disadvantaged did not have such services.
Prof Damian Hannan, the ESRI's education expert, welcomed the large expansion in remedial teaching the extra teacher allocation would lead to. He hoped this would particularly help those hard-pressed teachers who are "doing a very good job dealing with severely disadvantaged students". He wondered if there were sufficient numbers of properly trained remedial teachers to cater for the huge need in this area.
He particularly welcomed the £2 million to be allocated to disadvantaged schools to help them develop school plans and provide additional teacher supports. He thought it vital that such schools should "develop their organisation and effectiveness", especially given the changing role of the inspectorate and the emphasis on Whole School Evaluation.
The funding aimed at encouraging third-level participation by disadvantaged students he saw as "a very important initiative", particularly for those colleges such as Dublin City University, the University of Limerick and Trinity College Dublin, which had taken a lead in this area. He felt other third-level colleges should be "carpeted to get them to change".
The high drop-out rate among students from disadvantaged backgrounds in first year was a particular problem, Dr Hannan went on, which was why some colleges were now initiating pre-entry courses.
He noted that maintenance grants for mature students over 23 are to be brought into line with those of their younger colleagues. However, this would not benefit the large number of students from low income backgrounds who are having to subsist on "completely inadequate" grants at present.
The director of the Combat Poverty Agency, Mr Hugh Frazer, said it was not clear yet how some of the initiatives, such as the funding for extra teachers and psychological services, would be targeted to help those schools and students who were most disadvantaged. He hoped for a "coherent, strategic approach" to tackling educational disadvantage, as well as a list of different initiatives.
He was anxious there should be a link with an expanded "Breaking the Cycle" initiative, concentrating resources on a core group of particularly disadvantaged schools. He warmly welcomed the extra £300,000 for Traveller education and the acknowledgment of the importance of tackling disadvantage in the early, pre-school years.
Mr Frazer also welcomed the additional £3.2 million for adult literacy, while emphasising that this should not be spent only on extra tutors but on finding innovative ways to reach "the most disadvantaged when it comes to literacy and numeracy, who are also those least likely to come forward". He also noted that there had been no mention in Mr Martin's proposals of the voluntary and community sectors, who had a key role to play both in adult literacy and other programmes to tackle educational disadvantage.