Grant schemes for disadvantaged students inadequately address inequality, committee finds

The DEIS scheme, grant systems and other supports currently in place to assist disadvantaged students are inadequately addressing inequality, an education committee has found.

The finding is included in one of three reports due to be launched tomorrow by the Oireachtas education committee following an evaluation of barriers to education, the use of reduced timetables and school costs.

"There was a clear sense that the education system as it currently stands is unfair and unequal," the report states.

Travellers, lone parents, people who have disabilities, who are homeless, or who are in the care of the state, asylum seekers and those who are from less affluent backgrounds are destined to struggle.

Current policy is driven by the 'equality of opportunity', which sees a competitive approach taken to education, the report adds.

“It is accepted that some people win and some lose and those who end up at the top of the pile have done so through their own merits.”

While there is a system in place attempting to supplement gaps caused by poverty, disability and ethnicity through the DEIS scheme, grants and other supports, "equalising opportunity is inadequate and has not worked", the report found.

"We need to move to an approach that equalises the conditions in which our children are living and growing.”

Any future reforms should consider changing this ethos, the report also finds.

During the course of its evaluation, the committee heard that while a recent DEIS review shows that literacy and numeracy ability has improved, this improvement has also been observed in all schools across Ireland.

This means that children in DEIS schools are still underperforming in comparison to those students in non-DEIS schools.

The committee recommends that funding for community education is increased in future budgets; that the DEIS model of increased resources to early years programmes in DEIS communities is extended and that measures are introduced to reduce the cost of accessing third-level education.