Irish Teacher: DEIS programme cannot solve educational disadvantage on its own

Is government policy blocking educational equality?

'Children can get lost in the system unless an individual staff member uses their initiative.'

Equality is something Ireland has championed since independence, yet our latest budget sees no change to the DEIS system, Ireland’s answer to disadvantage in education.

Dr Brian Fleming has written extensively on the topic, most recently in his 2022 paper overviewing 100 years of state policy, in collaboration with fellow education experts Dr Judith Harford and Dr Áine Hyland.

“Equality of opportunity in Irish education is a central part of what can reasonably be described as the foundation text of the Irish state, the 1916 Proclamation,” he explains.

“Yet the Irish state did very little to bring about equality in education after independence. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that any real effort was made, by Donagh O’Malley, but the full scheme was never implemented.”

He also bemoans the narrowing of skills in our system, reducing choice.

“Since the 1970s, we have become obsessed with Higher Education for all. We had a strong tradition of preparing young people for apprenticeships under the VEC system and nearly lost it in recent decades. I’m glad to observe the balance coming back ... with the apprenticeship route being actively promoted and the Further Education sector being supported and developed. “

Fleming says, “I saw a lot of poverty and trauma in my time as a principal in a DEIS school. I also saw the impact of home life on a child,” and he believes wraparound supports are needed for such children.

“Deis has been going for 17 years and the gap isn’t closing quickly enough .... because it’s a Department of Education initiative, but these children need so much more than that. It must be cross-department and multi-disciplinary. That’s not easy but it’s the only thing that will work.”

He says the DEIS programme is a good one but cannot solve educational disadvantage on its own.

“There shouldn’t be a cliff edge of DEIS and non-DEIS schools either. We need far more grades of DEIS at second level. And we need a government and a minister who are willing to truly consider the issue at hand.”

Sinéad Collins is a Home Liaison Officer in a Band One DEIS school, and agrees with Dr Fleming on the need for a more holistic approach.

“The funding is fantastic, but the [it] can’t get you access to CAHMS or to social services. We need a far more collaborative model involving different services around the same table more regularly. There is currently no procedure and children can get lost in the system unless an individual staff member uses their initiative.”

Collins interviewed educators in schools for her thesis on educators implementing trauma-informed (able to recognise and deal with those affected by trauma) approaches to overcome educational disadvantage.

“The problem is, even if a teacher is trauma-informed, they can’t embed it properly because forcing all children to complete a set amount of PE per week, just as an example, is the opposite of wellbeing. Wellbeing is about feeling safe and secure. But there is not one mention of trauma in our wellbeing documents.”

Collins favours the term ‘neuro-biologically aware” over ‘trauma-informed’: “Teachers are sick of being told to be ‘trauma-informed’. Many of them can’t face their own trauma so they fight against it, which is very understandable. Considering the neurobiology of students is easier.”

Echoing Collins and Fleming, UNICEF’s Unfair Start Study (2018) concludes that tackling educational disadvantage “goes beyond education policy into the realm of social policy”.

Recovering from Covid offers new challenges. Data is not yet available on the impact of Covid on Irish students suffering from economic disadvantage. The Department of Education has brought their scheme, a one-off payment of €50m to an end.

Collins notes CAT (Cognitive Abilities Test) results have fallen but queries the use of such data in the first place: “How do you categorise learning solely through CAT scores? I’m much more interested in their social and emotional development which can be recorded using scores from Boxall testing.”

The recent budget has also failed to support educational psychologists. This is problematic if wraparound supports are important.

Trainee educational psychologist Séan Óg Hynes says, “the absence of funding for trainee child and adolescent educational psychologists in the Budget prevents the recruitment and retention of professionally trained staff to support vulnerable young people, parents and school staff.”

Arguably, government policy is blocking our Republic’s development into selfhood, a selfhood promising a more equal, more compassionate, more cohesive system for all.