Call to ring-fence funding for disadvantaged schools

EXTRA support for disadvantaged schools is having a positive effect but needs to be ring-fenced from any future cutbacks, a school principal has claimed.

North Presentation Primary School, in the shadow of Cork’s North Cathedral, has nearly 240 pupils, most from the nearby Shandon, Blackpool and Gurranabraher. It caters mostly for girls — with boys taught up to first class — and almost two-thirds of pupils are from families who have arrived in Ireland in the past decade.

School principal Kathleen Haverty said the additional staff and funding it gets as one of the 200 most disadvantaged urban primary schools — under the Department of Education’s Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) scheme — has brought huge benefits.