Funding for expansion of school initiative aimed at tackling disadvantage

Some schools will begin to get extra teachers or other resources next autumn in the first proper expansion, in a decade, of a programme to tackle disadvantage.

Education Minister Richard Bruton told the Dáil that extra money had been provided in the 2017 budget as his department envisages new schools coming into the school support programme (SSP) of the DEIS initiative.

More than 800 of the country’s 4,000 primary and second-level schools have benefited since it was set up in 2006, but none have been added since 2009.