Principals condemn ‘vacuous’ OECD review which missed ‘severe deprivation’ in some schools

An OECD report commissioned by the Department of Education to assess Ireland’s performance in addressing disadvantage in schools has been described as “vacuous” by a group of principals working at schools in some of Dublin’s most deprived areas.
About 30 principals of schools in west Tallaght, Ballymun and Darndale, describing themselves as the Deis+ Cluster Advocacy group, said the authors of the report, published in July, had relied “primarily on self-reporting by the Department of Education who, to no one’s surprise, tell us they are doing a very good job”.
“This information from the Department of Education to the OECD is repeated without criticism. The recommendations of the OECD are conservative, unimaginative and vague.”
The group wants a new level of Deis supports, provisionally titled Deis+, to be implemented by the department in order to address the high levels of need they say they see in their schools.
A survey of 17 of the schools’ principals published by the group in June suggested 54 per cent of their 3,500 pupils needed support teaching while 48 per cent had experienced a childhood trauma and more than 40 per cent missed 20 or more days of school each year.
“When we have been working with the department and the Child Protection Unit over the last two years, what we were being told was that any decision in relation to resourcing of Deis schools had to wait until this review was completed, but when we read this review, it doesn’t take into account the specific severe deprivation that our schools are facing,” said Conor McCarthy, principal of Tallaght Community National School.
“It’s frustrating because we were waiting two years for this report, which was so limited in terms of the number of schools visited, six schools in a one-week period in 2023.”
The report, Resourcing Schools to address Educational Disadvantage in Ireland, did acknowledge the reporting by some principals of “severe cases of intergenerational poverty, family break-ups, trauma linked to State care placement, homelessness, mental health issues, violence, (parental) substance abuse and bullying,” but it did not make any specific recommendations.
In a statement the Department of Education said that Minister Norma Foley has met a number of leaders from schools serving areas with high levels of deprivation.
“The Department of Education spends over €180 million annually providing additional supports to the region of 1,200 schools in the Deis programme,” a spokesperson added, highlighting that “the highest levels of resources are targeted at primary schools with the highest levels of concentrated educational disadvantage”.