Last year Minister for Education Norma Foley announced she had invited the OECD to review the way resources were allocated to the Deis programme of support for schools in disadvantaged communities.
In OECD terms, a review is not an evaluation as it tends to focus on operational aspects. Very soon rumours began to circulate that it was to be a limited effort. Specifically, it was to be a desk-based study, by and large, and members of the team were to interview people but on a list supplied by the Department of Education, including one of the authors of this article. Their engagement with people working directly in the field of educational disadvantage was to be extremely limited. In order to clarify the approach being taken, we sought information from the Department of Education, including the research terms of reference of the study. This request was relayed by the department to the OECD team, who advised that “they do not release the type of information which you have requested, including the terms of reference or the list of stakeholders whom they have consulted”. This seems to suggest that the department had no say in the drawing up the terms of reference of a study the Minister had commissioned, surely an odd arrangement.
In summer 2023, interviews were carried out online with various individuals. The desk-based nature of the process became clear as the team spent only five days in the country during September that year. Almost all this time was spent talking to officials of various government departments and agencies. Just four Deis schools were visited, including one at post-primary level. Obviously, the intention was to interact more with those who have theoretical knowledge of the issues rather than with those who face the effects of poverty in schools on a daily basis. This contributed to a central weakness in the review.
In their report, the team displayed an understanding of the theory: “The rationale for the Deis approach is the existence of a ‘multiplier effect’, whereby students attending a school with a concentration of students from disadvantaged backgrounds have poorer academic outcomes, even taking account of individual social background.” Yet, at various stages they placed strong emphasis on what they described as the “non-disadvantaged students” in Deis schools. Looking at that group in those terms is to ignore the “multiplier” effect and the reality of life in a school serving a poverty-stricken area. For example, they recorded that Deis schools appear to be hardest hit by teacher absenteeism. Are they implying that this has no implications for the “non-disadvantaged students”?
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The review wasn’t released until the second half of July – which ensured it received very limited immediate public attention. Principals working in some of the most disadvantaged schools nationally have since responded to the report, calling it “vacuous”. While we share this frustration at the inherent weaknesses in the report, we feel it important to nonetheless highlight some important points it makes in relation to Deis.
The overall increase in the budget was less than 1 per cent while the increase in the number of students covered was 50 per cent. This implies that the extension of Deis to additional schools was, to a large extent, at the expense of existing ones
On the resources issue, the OECD team described the investment in Deis in terms of the overall education budget as “quite modest”. Moreover, they noted that the extension of the scheme to additional schools occurred in the absence of a proportionate budgetary increase. The overall increase in the budget was less than 1 per cent while the increase in the number of students covered was 50 per cent. This implies that the extension of Deis to additional schools was, to a large extent, at the expense of existing ones. The amount available under the scheme, calculated on a per student capita basis, declined in real terms. In addition, the OECD team noted suggestions made that some schools who are participating in the scheme no longer fulfil the qualifying criteria. If true, this means that less of the “modest” Deis budget is available to qualified participants. Moreover, it undermines the entire credibility of the programme.
The teacher supply crisis is hitting Deis schools hardest. We have written at length in these columns on the scale of the crisis and have witnessed first hand the impact through our work with Deis schools under the Power2Progress programme. The OECD team expressed the view that there was “currently no regular monitoring of indicators related to teacher shortages at the central level” and suggested that Ireland “should, therefore, further strengthen its efforts to monitor the supply and demand of teachers and the factors that drive them, particularly in disadvantaged schools”. In this context they proposed targeted efforts “to attract and retain” diverse professionals for a career in such schools. This proposal echoes similar thinking in an Educational Disadvantage Committee report about 20 years ago, but never implemented.
[ Mind the gap: Is the Deis programme for schools fit for purpose?Opens in new window ]
The OECD team suggested that deprivation indicators used to determine which schools participate in Deis could be further improved. They reiterated a point made previously in an ESRI study (2015) about the vague nature of the scheme’s objectives and referenced the case made in that report for a tapered version of Deis to assist schools that fall just outside the qualification criteria, an approach the department has never implemented.
A comment from the department accompanied the publication of this review: “The review is not a review of the overall Deis programme. The review findings and recommendations will inform future policy development of the Deis resource allocation model and school resourcing policies aimed at addressing educational disadvantage in all schools.”
The vague nature of this comment, together with the timing of the publication, suggests that fundamental weaknesses in the Deis programme and inequities in Irish education policy, which have been ignored for so long, are not going to be addressed any time soon.
Dr Brian Fleming and Prof Judith Harford are academics at UCD’s school of education
