Over 121 of the country's most disadvantaged schools are to receive a range of additional supports, including more than 400 additional staff under a new DEIS plus scheme, which is to be rolled out from this coming September.
The plan targets schools with the deepest and most persistent levels of disadvantage and places a central focus on addressing mental health and wellbeing among children attending.
The Department of Education and Youth said this is in response to the high number of children enrolled in those schools who have experienced trauma and adversity.
The 400 additional staff will include an additional teaching post in each of the 121 schools directly aimed at coordinating the promotion of mental health and well-being within the school.
Promised under the Programme for Government, the DEIS plus scheme will extend to 96 urban primary schools and 25 urban post-primaries.
It allocates a total of 350 additional teachers to the schools, all in roles targeted at strengthening schools' capacity to support students at risk.
They include 30 additional guidance counsellor posts and for the first time, there will be some guidance counselling available at primary school level.
Twenty-five additional welfare practitioner posts will be provided across primary schools in the scheme, with an extension of this to post-primary schools promised over time, according to the department.
The schools to be included in the scheme were identified using a new data-driven identification model. This follows a recent OECD report into Ireland’s DEIS system which recommended a more data-driven approach.
Additional staff have been seconded to the Department of Education from the Central Statistics Office for this.
In a complex exercise they have combined data from geographic information system the Pobal HP deprivation index - which outlines deprivation levels across geographic units including electoral divisions - with other modelling systems in order to identify schools with the most deprived cohorts of children and young people.
Additional weighting has been given to schools catering for especially vulnerable cohorts such as homeless children, Traveller and Roma children or children growing up in direct provision.
The evidence gathered shows extreme deprivation concentrated in geographic clusters, and those pupils concentrated in a small number of schools, department officials said.
Also published today is a ten-year strategy for all DEIS schools which will be delivered in three phases.
This wider strategy will see an expansion of Home School Community Liaison roles to 130 additional schools and an increased provision for 121. HSCL co-ordinators are teachers who work outside the classroom to develop links with families and parents.
This initiative will see some schools outside of the DEIS programme able to access HSCL services for the first time.
DEIS plus includes a joint working group involving the Department of Education and Youth and the Department of Health, aimed at improving access to health services such as dental services for children attending the schools via their schools.
Department officials point to the fact that many vulnerable families place great trust in their child's school.
The plan also includes 33 additional school leadership posts, enhanced grant funding for the 121 schools, and increased funding for youth services close to post-primary schools.
A spokesperson described the additional €48 million allocated to the DEIS plus scheme and the DEIS strategy as "a significant step up in addressing educational inequality across Ireland".
Scheme 'going to be transformational' - principal
The principal of Tallaght Community National School has said DEIS plus scheme is "really going to be transformational" for schools.
It is hoped that the scheme will be in place for the beginning of the next school year, which starts in September.
Speaking on RTÉ's Today with David McCullagh, Conor McCarthy said the scheme is recognition that there are schools in parts of Dublin, Limerick and Cork where there is a "disproportionate level of children with additional needs or children who have experienced a direct trauma in their lives".
"For those children there is huge difficulty in accessing the curriculum it is impacting on their learning."
Mr McCarthy, who helped design the scheme, added that it will provide 121 primary and post-primary schools more supports to help those children access learning every day.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
It will also give each of the schools its own 'home school community liaison teacher’, which is a teacher who works directly with parents to help them understand how they can support their child's education.
"It is a teacher who will visit parents' homes, it is a teacher who will run in school parent workshops and that will really help us because education starts at home," Mr McCarthy said.
He added that it will also provide the schools with a mental health and well-being coordinator role.
Mr McCarthy cited esearch they have conducted that shows "up to 50% of children in our schools would have experienced a direct trauma in their early life".
He said having someone in school overseeing how they create trauma-informed spaces and offering supports to children will have a long-term benefit for them and their education.
"It’s really going to be transformational I think in schools.
"I would say 75% of what we identified is in this first tranche of support coming in September," Mr McCarthy said.
