I beg to move

That this Assembly recognises that socio-economic background is the biggest predictor of educational underachievement; acknowledges that a range of targeted interventions across government are required to tackle the issue and give children and young people the opportunity to reach their potential; welcomes the allocation of over £20 million from the Shared Island Fund to help tackle educational underachievement; regrets that the resulting RAISE programme’s eligibility formula excludes many schools in some of the most deprived working-class communities; further regrets that, by design, this programme will not deliver based on objective need; and calls on the Minister of Education to replace the RAISE programme with a new programme that will target support to the schools and children that, based on objective evidence, need it most.

The Business Committee has agreed to allow up to one hour and 30 minutes for the debate. The proposer of the motion will have 10 minutes to propose and 10 minutes to make a winding-up speech. As an amendment has been selected and is published on the Marshalled List, the Business Committee has agreed that 15 minutes will be added to the total time for the debate.

Please open the debate on the motion.

Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

[Translation: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.]

Educationalists, experts and academics agree that poverty is the biggest predictor of educational underachievement. The issue with the RAISE programme is that it does not give poverty and deprivation the weight that they deserve when determining what areas are eligible for funding and/or inclusion. I do not disagree with an area-based or locality-based approach to targeting educational disadvantage; indeed, the 'A Fair Start' report recommended that schools should be incentivised to:

"work more collaboratively with the communities they serve."

The difficulty now is that less-deprived areas and even some more-affluent areas are due to be included within the programme, while children and young people in many deprived areas in working-class communities are set to be excluded. "Punishing poverty and rewarding wealth", is how one school principal described the situation.

As a party, we welcomed the announcement of £20 million in much-needed funding for our education system from the Shared Island unit, and the Minister deserves credit for identifying and securing new funding opportunities. However, in a system with such limited resources, we should be targeting any additional funding to where it is needed most, and, unfortunately, that simply will not happen under the RAISE programme. Instead of targeting areas of deprivation where we know educational underachievement persists and is most acute, the Education Minister has decided to spread the programme geographically and has used a flawed formula to determine eligibility. Electing to spread the scheme geographically will purposefully redirect much-needed resources away from where they are needed most. If the data is telling us where the need is, that is where the resources and associated interventions should go.

I am also concerned that the apparent over-reliance on GCSE data runs counter to the concept of early intervention. Socio-economic background is a much more comprehensive predictor of educational underachievement in the long term, because it shapes the foundational conditions that influence a student's entire educational journey. The research in this area is crystal clear. It is not geography that is the best indicator of educational outcomes. Neither is it religion. Poverty and deprivation are the primary predictors of educational underachievement, and when we talk about poverty and deprivation in the context of our education system, we measure it by the level of free school meal entitlement (FSME), using free school meal entitlement as a tried, tested and trusted indicator of socio-economic status. While 'A Fair Start' did recommend that the Department should explore the potential of using other indicators, research commissioned by the Department recommended that free school meal entitlement should not be replaced as the primary indicator of socio-economic disadvantage.

The credibility of the RAISE programme and public confidence in the scheme was further eroded when a list of seemingly eligible schools was published on the Department of Education's website. The list has since been removed, but the appearance on that list of a preparatory school that charges £5,000 per year in fees as, seemingly, eligible for inclusion has done nothing at all for the credibility of the programme.

The Minister must go back to the drawing board. We need a plan that will deliver based on objective need. A plan that will direct funding and target support to the children and communities that need it most, and a plan that, ultimately, the public can have confidence in.

Officials appeared recently at the Education Committee and, basically, told us that we did not understand how the RAISE programme is supposed to work. In relation to the list of schools published on the Department's website, which were deemed to have met the eligibility criteria for the RAISE programme, officials said that just being on that list does not mean that a school meets the eligibility criteria. Similarly, we were told that schools that were not on the published list were not necessarily excluded from the programme. Is it any wonder that people are confused about how the programme is supposed to be administered and delivered?

The Minister, I am sure, will also have heard criticisms of the programme from a number of school principals in the media. Those are principals of schools in some of the most deprived areas in the North, whose schools appear to fall outside the Minister's proposed geographical catchment areas. Are they confused also? Do they not understand how the programme is to be rolled out? It is also worth mentioning the fact that the Minister told Mark Carruthers on 'The View' that he clearly did not understand how the RAISE programme is supposed to work. So, there we have it: everyone is confused and wrong, except the Minister.

I have already said that the Minister should go back to the drawing board. There are plenty of examples of good practice in dealing with educational disadvantage. The Engage programme, which helped children who had fallen behind in their learning after COVID, is one good example. That was rolled out on the basis of free school meal entitlement, and it produced positive results. The Minister could also look further afield, to the South, at the delivering equality of opportunity in schools programme, known as DEIS, which aims to reduce educational disadvantage. Under the DEIS programme, schools with the highest number of students at risk of educational disadvantage get extra resources. Perhaps, given the fact that we have the longest tail of educational underachievement on these islands, the Minister might take some learning from the DEIS programme and the system in the South in general.

The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) comparative study of the education systems, North and South, shows that far fewer young people are leaving school without qualifications in the South than in the North. Significantly more are going on to third-level education in the South than in the North. The ESRI report also flagged the issue of academic selection, which it deemed to be a major factor in educational underachievement here. Of course, no serious educationalist believes that academic selection at the age of 10 or 11 is of any benefit, either to the children or to the system of education that we have here.

Let me conclude with a suggestion for the Minister. When he devises or invents a new scheme and funding model, it is wise to game it out and test-drive it in order to establish whether there are any anomalies or unintended consequences. When that has been done, one question needs to be asked: is this outcome fair? By any metric or yardstick, this scheme that the Minister has come up with is blatantly unfair and is not based on objective need.

I beg to move the following amendment:

Leave out all after "further regrets that" and insert: "this programme may not deliver based on objective need; calls on the Minister of Education to urgently review the criteria for the targeting of the RAISE programme to ensure that funding is directed to the children and young people most impacted on by the effects of socio-economic deprivation and experiencing the highest levels of educational underachievement, based on objective need; and further calls on the Minister to update the Committee for Education and the Assembly on the actions that the Department is taking to alleviate concerns and ensure the integrity of the programme."

You will have 10 minutes to propose the amendment and five minutes to make a winding-up speech. All other contributors will have five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. This is a really challenging motion because it asks us to endorse scrapping a £20 million programme that has the objective of reducing educational disadvantage. That is a massive ask, and it is one that, we feel, goes too far. The purpose of our amendment is to agree with concerns that have been raised about the criteria that have been used but to confine any repurposing to that aspect of the programme only.

We want to start by talking about the positives of the RAISE programme. Its objective, which is to tackle educational disadvantage, is an ambition that, I know, we all share. Every child deserves the opportunity to thrive and fulfil their potential, and education offers a route out of poverty for children in our most disadvantaged areas. Objective need, however, must be the core principle that guides how we target interventions in this space.

I also welcome the investment: £20 million is a substantial and hugely welcome investment from the Shared Island Fund in this vital area, which has been underfunded for too long. Taking a whole-community, place-based approach to this issue is welcome, and we support that. I particularly love the two concepts of community that have been articulated in that approach: the geographic place, but also the different groups and people impacting on a child's life. It is holistic and looks beyond school-based provision to parental support and early intervention initiatives.

The baseline for educational inequalities in Northern Ireland is depressingly low. Evidence indicates that educational inequalities in Northern Ireland are wider than in other parts of the UK and comparable OECD countries. How do we find ourselves debating a motion to scrap a programme that is so badly needed? The answer is simple: the Department produced and published a list of schools that were eligible to benefit from the scheme, and that list excluded schools from some of the most deprived wards in Northern Ireland. For a scheme with a focus on educational underachievement, it is more than reasonable to raise questions and express concerns about how the methodology resulted in that outcome.

The Department has since removed that list, but it was unacceptable that the Minister ever endorsed such a reckless communication. It resulted in schools in my constituency of Lagan Valley — the same constituency as the Minister — being the target of ire and negativity in the media and in public discourse. Those schools were not responsible for their inclusion on the list. They did not receive a penny of funding from the RAISE programme, nor would they necessarily have done so. The Department knows that, because the RAISE programme is not about uplifting school budgets in selected localities; it is expressly about acknowledging that education does not start and end at the school gates. So, publishing a list of schools at all was reckless and misleading, and it called into question the integrity of the whole programme before it had barely started. This is too important an issue to have been so carelessly handled.

Poor communication aside, I am more than happy to highlight the positives and the potential of the RAISE programme, which is a product of the parent, Executive-endorsed 'A Fair Start' report. I believe that the RAISE programme has been faithful to the recommendation to develop a whole-community and place-based focused approach. I have heard first-hand from stakeholders who have participated in initial engagement sessions, and they are excited about the programme's potential to do good. In other aspects, however, the Department appears to have pivoted away from the express rationale of the expert panel.

The expert panel envisaged a reducing educational disadvantage (RED) programme that would:

"focus on communities and families in the most disadvantaged areas."

The criteria that the Department used are complicated, and, although we accept that the nature of educational disadvantage is complicated, we need to feel confident that funding is being directed at the children and young people who are impacted on the most by the effects of socio-economic deprivation and who experience the highest levels of educational underachievement.

In Northern Ireland, free school meal entitlement is often used as an imperfect proxy for a child's socio-economic status or level of deprivation. 'A Fair Start' highlights the limitations of using free school meals as a measure of disadvantage and goes so far as to recommend commissioning research on the issue. The independent review concluded, however, that it would not recommend that the Department replace free school meals as its primary indicator of socio-economic disadvantage. The Department is clearly attempting to be nuanced and to reflect the complexity of educational attainment, but we need to better understand the scrutiny and modelling that the selection criteria have gone through. More fundamentally, we need to understand whether using that indicator strays from the proposal that the programme should be targeted at communities and families in the most disadvantaged areas.

The briefings that the Committee has received to date have left us with more questions than answers. One of the many questions that I still have is why educational attainment plays such a prominent role in the ranking process, especially when the RAISE programme may focus on intervention in early years. For some localities, 'A Fair Start' outlines the need to tell a much broader story of success than that of attainment alone, which has too often been focused on narrow measures such as GCSEs. From looking at equivalent programmes in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, we see that Northern Ireland is an outlier in the targeting methodology adopted by the RAISE programme. Programmes in those other jurisdictions simply used established measures of deprivation to reach the most deprived children. We are not opposed to innovation of approach, but we need to have confidence that alternative approaches are robust and will deliver on objective need. The lack of clarity on the selection criteria extends to how the RAISE programme will be implemented and how success will be measured. For example, we have concerns about the use of GCSE data as the key measure of success in areas where early years programmes have been implemented. The duration of the RAISE programme is just two years right now, but longer-term tracking is needed in order to measure the impact of early years interventions.

The early stages of the programme's development have been weakened by a lack of transparency and scrutiny. If the Minister was confident in the approach that he oversaw, there was an opportunity for him to brief the Education Committee and the Assembly early and bring us along with the Department's thinking. There is still an opportunity for him to do that. If, for example, the Minister can show us that the current selection criteria for the RAISE programme have been co-designed with the 'A Fair Start' report expert panel and are independently verified, we would be happy to accept that, but we are still awaiting clarity. Too often when the Minister has faced legitimate challenges about his decision-making and the Department's performance, his reflex action has not been to give a coherent defence of his decision but to make tenuous political attacks on the questioner. Our education system, with the many challenges that it faces, is too important to be used — abused, rather — as a political sledgehammer wielded against electoral rivals. Our people want more from us. We absolutely have different perspectives on some issues, but tackling educational underachievement is an issue that must unite us.

We want the programme to succeed. We want to see it transform the lives of children and young people. I therefore hope that the motion passes with our amendment having been made. In short, our asks are for an urgent review of the criteria to ensure that the programme is driven by objective need and for the Minister to update the Education Committee and the Assembly on the actions that he is taking to alleviate concerns about the programme. The RAISE programme has had a rocky start, but we now have an opportunity for a reset, not only to rebuild trust in the programme but to reset how we will work together to make it a success.

I thank the Members opposite for tabling the motion, which allows for debate on this incredibly important issue. Members will know of the passion that I have had for tackling educational underachievement for a number of years. In fact, in 2016, my party was the first of the Executive parties to publish research in that area, with recommendations on how to solve it. At this point, I pay tribute to Dr John Kyle, who also published research when the topic was not being discussed in the House back in 2015.

I agree with the proposer that socio-economic background is an important predictor of educational achievement. However, it is not the only one, and that is a substantial problem with how the motion is worded. I will provide some other simple predictors. For boys, having a male teacher as a positive role model can have a significant impact. Another is the home environment in which a child is brought up and the level of engagement by parents in a child's education. Parental aspirations and attitudes also have massive impacts on a child's development and eventual educational achievement.

We need to look at the actual data in order to understand what is quite a complex issue. The Community Relations Council published some now fairly historical data, which I used when I was writing my report. Its research found that 73·6% of girls from a Chinese background who were on free school meals, on average, achieved five GCSEs, and that boys in Northern Ireland who were not on free school meals, at that point, were achieving 58·6%. That is an interesting message. It simply says that entitlement to free school meals is not the only indicator of educational achievement.

My understanding is that the RAISE —.

I thank the Member for taking an intervention. We did not say that free school meals entitlement was the only indicator: we said that economic and social deprivation is the best indicator of educational outcomes.

The Member has an extra minute.

I agree with the Member that it is one of the predictors, but it is not the only one.

RAISE is a place-based programme. As Members have said, it came out of the 'A Fair Start' report, which was an excellent report from the panel chaired by Noel Purdy.

There has already been some chat about the actual criteria that were used. Seven indicators were used for the programme, based on superoutput areas. It is worth reading out the list. They are: free school meals entitlement, which has been referenced; the level of GCSE attainment in schools; pupil absence rates, which are important to educational outcomes; the prevalence of special educational needs; the number of crime and antisocial behaviour incidents in the area; a statistic that measured income deprivation affecting children; and another statistic that measured health deprivation and disability. I challenge the proposers of the motion and the amendment to tell the House which criteria they would leave out if they deemed them to be unworthy of inclusion.

What RAISE is trying to do, and what we have sometimes done in the past, is simply to attach funding to areas where there is high uptake of free school meals or, as the Member has suggested, areas of economic deprivation, and we have not been sophisticated about how we have tried to target that funding. This programme is simply becoming more sophisticated in getting the intervention to the children who actually really need it. For me, that is incredibly important.

The phrase in the motion:

" that, by design, this programme will not deliver based on objective need" is erroneous. In fact, the opposite is true. I commend the Education Minister for bringing forward the RAISE programme. I am really heartened. I hope that Members agree that anything that tries to address educational underachievement in Northern Ireland should be welcomed. However, the measurement, as the Member referred to, is simply a more sophisticated way of trying to intervene.

Finally, to clear up another misunderstanding, I point out that it is not a schools-based programme; it is a community-informed one. Schools may very well be part of the solution, but not exclusively so. Interventions could include programmes delivered through community groups, churches or youth organisations. I hope and believe that the programme will deliver really positive interventions for our children in Northern Ireland.

Education is the most powerful weapon that we have at our disposal. It has the potential to lift individuals out of poverty, to break cycles of disadvantage and to create opportunities that can transform lives. However, too often, many of our children in Northern Ireland are left behind. The reality is that many of our children are not receiving the quality of education that they deserve. They are caught in a system that, despite our best intentions, fails to provide them with the support and resources that they need to thrive.

When we speak of educational underachievement, we are not just addressing numbers or statistics but we are discussing real lives: children filled with potential who are being let down by a system that should empower them. The disparities in achievement among our students reveal the troubling truth that not all our children are offered an equal chance to succeed. Education is the cornerstone of opportunity. It equips our children with the knowledge, skills and resilience to navigate an increasingly complex world. However, we face significant disparities in educational attainment. Too often, those disparities reflect broader social and economic inequalities. In our region, particularly in areas of socio-economic disadvantage, the ambition and potential of young people are stifled by barriers that should not exist in a society that is committed to fairness and progress. It is disheartening that many of our most vulnerable students struggle to achieve basic literacy and numeracy skills, leaving them ill-equipped to seize the opportunities that life offers. We must recognise that underachievement is often a symptom of deeper fundamental issues, about which the Member who spoke previously went into detail.

As Members of the Assembly, it is our duty to confront those challenges with urgency and determination. Members, we must ask ourselves why it is that children in certain areas consistently lag behind their peers. Why do socio-economic factors continue to dictate educational outcomes? Those questions demand answers and, more importantly, action. The Ulster Unionist Party will join others in striving to ensure that all children receive the right support in the right way at the right time, but we also recognise that the Minister and his Department need to review and adapt the provision as dictated by evidence. We ask the Minister and his Department to continually review the programme, to provide details of the defined outcomes and to assure the Assembly that all moneys will be spent well to ensure that the pupils, schools, communities and other organisations that need the support most receive it in a timely manner. As leaders, educators and community members, we bear the responsibility to break down the barriers that hinder our young people's success. We must forge a path forward that prioritises their well-being and future.

Let us remember that every child in Northern Ireland deserves the opportunity to succeed.

I appreciate the Member's giving way. Normally, I respond at the end of a debate, but a lot of points are being raised, and I wanted to pick up on one of them. The Member mentioned social deprivation. He is absolutely right, as was the proposer of the motion and those who seek to amend it, about the importance of social deprivation.

My colleague outlined that it is also an important factor, which is reflected in the criteria. However, it is not, as Mr Sheehan said, the best predictor of educational attainment and underachievement.

In 2022, a study by Dr Erin Early, Professor Miller, Dr Dunne and Elizabeth Nelson Gorman was published, and it is available to Members. Yes, the study substantiated the view that free school meals was an important factor, but it found that parental qualifications, particularly having a mother or father with no qualifications, were a greater predictor of attainment. Free school meals is not the best predictor, and I will elaborate on that in my response. Other factors relate to educational underachievement and to making sure that we get attainment.

The Member's time is almost up.

Apologies to the Member.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the Minister for his intervention.

The Member has an extra minute.

Together, we can address educational underachievement and build a brighter future for our children. Let us invest in their potential, because, when our children thrive, our communities flourish.

For too long, our children from the most deprived economic backgrounds have been failed by our education system. The reality of the divide between grammar schools and secondary schools means that those with the ability to give their children private tuition tend to do so. We already know from research at home and internationally that those at the lowest end of the socio-economic divide begin to lag behind their more affluent peers at an early age and that the gap in attainment only widens as their education progresses.

The RAISE programme proposes an intervention model to help lift those at risk of underachievement, and it is a most welcome scheme. I understand that the expert panel that drafted the proposal did so in good faith and sought to tackle the problem in this jurisdiction. However, serious questions are apparent and have echoed around the Chamber today. How is it that a school that educates overwhelmingly middle-class children from aspirational, well-heeled and high-income homes has been designated for inclusion in the scheme while some of our most struggling and challenged schools have not? It is still unclear how that has happened. It simply does not make sense that a fee-paying prep school that charges £5,000 a year in fees has been included whilst a school in west Belfast where over 70% of the students receive free school meals has not. When researching the matter, I came across information about some schools that have not been included, such as West Winds Primary School in Newtownards, where 71% of pupils receive free school meals, and Holy Cross College in Strabane, an area that I used to represent, where 35·3% receive free school meals.

Universally, as discussed, it is recognised that economic background is the biggest determining factor for educational achievement and career prospects. As legislators, we have a responsibility to ensure that public funds are delivered on the basis of objective need. It cannot be the case, especially in these challenging times when budgets are so tight, that millions are allotted to schools when every normal indicator suggests that they are not in acute need of those funds. We have heard from some school leaders that, as it stands, the RAISE scheme punishes poverty and rewards wealth. There are profound issues about how the money has been allocated. It is of the utmost importance that some kind of reassessment of eligibility is done. The Executive must be seen to take action and lift up those who are objectively most in need first, not those who come from wealthy backgrounds in the North and clearly do not require the intervention that is provided by the programme.

The SDLP supports the motion and the amendment, as we feel that it calls for change, enhanced transparency and collaboration with the Minister at the Education Committee. I am of the firm belief that the Committee is a fantastic tool for scrutinising effectively and learning more from the Minister. I think that we all agree that having the Minister there so that we have the ability to ask questions and seek answers will be beneficial for us all. I hope that we can agree today to remodel the RAISE scheme in such a way that it delivers for our most vulnerable young people. Beyond that, it is crucial that we ensure that the funds that we have are adequately spent on those who are most in need.

The decision to pursue a greater geographical spread through the RAISE programme rather than target resources on the basis of objective need is fundamentally flawed. By trying to achieve a greater geographical spread, the Minister is directing much-needed funding away from communities that need it most. I am really not convinced that the design of the programme has been fully thought through. If, as the Department officials suggested, the goal is indeed to increase geographical coverage, a goal that cannot be disagreed with, why have large working-class communities from mid-Ulster, Omagh, Strabane, Armagh city and the entirety of my constituency of South Down all been excluded from the RAISE programme? For instance, there are parts of Downpatrick that rank highly in terms of deprivation. It is an area outside Belfast, yet it does not feature at all. Fantastic schools like St Colmcille's Primary School in Downpatrick have been excluded from the RAISE funding despite being in an area that scores higher on the deprivation index than other areas that are included in the proposals.

If we are serious about tackling educational underachievement, we must accept that poverty is the biggest predictor of educational underachievement. That has not been fully accepted in the design of the programme. There is an over-reliance on GCSE data in determining eligibility. That is deeply problematic and runs counter to the concept of early intervention. Time after time, we hear that early intervention is key. If we are serious about improving the educational outcomes of all children, rather than just using buzzwords, the Department should work to invest in early intervention through early years and primary-level education to give children the very best start in life.

The Minister must go back to the drawing board with this. We need a plan that will deliver the investment on the basis of objective need and target and support the children and communities that need it most in order to promote the very best educational outcomes for all children.

I welcome the RAISE programme. Educational underachievement is a serious challenge for Northern Ireland, and it is correct that the Department is taking steps to tackle it. The substantial funding that has been set aside for the programme is appropriate.

The RAISE programme is an important step on the road to raising achievement for all learners in Northern Ireland, and there are many things that are good and excellent about it. First, I am pleased to see that the programme broadly reflects the recommendations made by the expert panel on educational underachievement. Evidence-based interventions are effective interventions. I am always ready to support policies that are based on independent expert advice and high-quality evidence.

Another positive about the RAISE programme is its whole-community and place-based approach and its emphasis on community-based partnerships. The expert panel strongly recommended a place-based approach because it is an effective model that has been applied successfully within and outside Northern Ireland. That is based on two important insights: first, that drivers of underachievement interact in unique ways in different places; and, secondly, that underachievement cannot be tackled successfully without involving the wider community in which it is happening. Place-based, whole-community programmes promise greater cooperation at a local level and create greater collective impact.

I also like the fact that the eligibility criteria for RAISE are based on a multiple deprivation model. The drivers of underachievement in Northern Ireland are incredibly complex. Research has shown that many factors are involved. Gender, free school meal entitlement, religion, special educational needs (SEN) status, school type and area deprivation are all associated with differences in achievement, and different factors can amplify one another. At the same time, it is true that associations with socio-economic status are particularly well supported by evidence. A recent report on child poverty by the NI Audit Office found that, at every stage of education, poorer children experience poorer outcomes. The NI Executive's children and young people strategy states:

"social disadvantage has the greatest single impact on educational attainment."

The attainment gap between pupils in receipt of free school meals and other children also remains substantial, according to another NI Audit Office report.

In light of that evidence, it is puzzling to see some very deprived areas excluded from the list of RAISE locations. For example, the list of RAISE areas includes not a single area in my constituency of South Down or the neighbouring Strangford constituency. That means that a huge area of south-east Down is getting zero investment under the scheme. Newcastle, Downpatrick, Ardglass, Kilkeel and Warrenpoint are areas in my constituency with high levels of deprivation compared with other areas of NI, yet they are currently excluded from the RAISE programme. Those areas also have high percentages of children in low-income households. As a whole, South Down ranks among the five constituencies with the highest percentage of child poverty in Northern Ireland.

It is fantastic to see such a state-of-the-art programme implemented to benefit our children across Northern Ireland, and scrapping it outright would be an absolute shame and akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Developing a whole new programme would further delay the support that our children in the most deprived areas so urgently need to thrive. I cannot support that. However, it seems to me that the eligibility formula may need some tweaking. In its current form, the resulting allocation does not seem equitable. I therefore call on the Minister to urgently review the criteria for targeting the RAISE programme. Those criteria must ensure that funding is directed to benefiting the children and young people who are most impacted by socio-economic deprivation and who experience the highest level of underachievement. Eligibility must be based on objective need.

The Minister has failed to explain his rationale for using new methodologies to define, identify and measure deprivation and educational underachievement. Under the new RAISE indicators, we see grammar and fee-paying schools in the lists of those eligible for funding. It is notable that the indicative list of eligible schools, which included 40 grammar schools and a prep school, as has been said, now appears to be gone from the DE website. To put it mildly, that suggests serious discomfort and a lack of confidence in the methodology used to identify the schools, or, to put it bluntly, the Minister has a bit of egg on his face.

There is no doubt that some pupils in grammar and maybe even in fee-paying schools may experience poverty. Some may even be eligible for free school meals, but, despite what the Minister says, RAISE is not simply about extending funding to more schools and more communities. Fundamentally, it is an initiative to tackle deprivation that sees grammar and fee-paying schools eligible for funding. The scheme includes the third most affluent school in the North, where just 4% of pupils are eligible for free school meals. It also happens to be in the Minister's constituency. At the same time, schools such as Bunscoil an tSléibhe Dhuibh, where 60% of pupils are entitled to free school meals are ineligible. Square that circle, please. That seems totally counter-intuitive for a programme that aims to tackle educational underachievement and deprivation.

Free school meals uptake is not a perfect indicator of deprivation, but it has worked well for some time. When it was the primary measure of deprivation, areas with some of the highest levels of poverty and housing need actually received funding. In effect, the Minister has made active, conscious choices to extend funding to wealthier communities and schools at the expense of making schools in deprived areas ineligible for funding. That is totally unacceptable.

The Minister has highlighted the fact that the scheme extends across the North, rather than focusing only on urban areas, but it is still possible to have a programme that benefits working-class communities across the North. The scheme should benefit schools in deprived areas, including West Belfast, Ligoniel, Strabane, Downpatrick, South Down and West Winds Primary School in Newtownards as well, and its failure to do so is an indictment of the Minister's priorities and political decision-making. The Department has said that the fact that a school is not on the list of those eligible for funding does not mean that it cannot be involved in the programme. That is an attempt at damage limitation, to be frank.

It would be helpful if the Minister could explain in what capacity schools in deprived communities might eventually be allowed to avail themselves of a programme to tackle educational underachievement and disadvantage, despite it appearing that they were not allowed to apply in the first place.

The proposer of the motion also raised the issue of academic selection, and again — surprise, surprise — there is no sign from the Minister that he intends to end academic selection. It is worth repeating that academic selection perpetuates division and inequality. It amplifies middle-class advantage and acts as a barrier to a more inclusive education system. In that context and in the absence of plans to scrap academic selection, primary schools and non-selective secondary schools mitigate the worst impacts of our unequal system. When it comes to tackling educational disadvantage, our primary and non-selective secondary schools always do the heavy lifting. A scheme that fails to recognise that basic fact and fails to give those schools the resources that they desperately need is doomed to fail.

The Minister recently gave the go-ahead for capital investment in seven schools out of a list of 28 that were identified in 2022. Again, questions are being asked about the Minister's methodology and how the Department has ranked the schools in need of investment.

The £20 million mentioned about the RAISE programme is obviously funded by the Irish Government through the Irish fund.

If my TD colleagues are returned in the general election in the South, we will be raising this further and criticising the Minister's approach to it.

We have heard from all Members who are listed to speak, so I call the Minister of Education to respond. Minister, you have up to 15 minutes.

Thank you. In any other forum at any other time, I would have thought it uncontentious to say that the best way to tackle educational underachievement is to tackle educational underachievement. Not so in this House, it seems. Instead, there is much focus on hyperbole and unfounded assertions. When we have objective educational data, I do not really understand why that is the case. The United States congressman Daniel Patrick Moynihan once reflected:

"You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts."

That seems appropriate to the premise of the motion. Prejudice is, of course, a great timesaver. You can form opinions without having to get to the facts. I am happy to debate the constraining opinions, although I find it unproductive to debate facts.

The House must ask itself this: should the RAISE programme simply and exactly replicate the £80 million of annual funding already allocated to tackle social disadvantage in schools through the common funding scheme and other programmes or should it seek to support communities across Northern Ireland, ensuring a regional spread and directly targeting children living in areas where educational outcomes are lowest? The motion suggests that socio-economic background is the biggest predictor of educational underachievement. The evidence across the world, of course, shows a close link between social disadvantage and low educational achievement. That is why significant funding is already targeted by my Department to tackle social disadvantage.

The independent review of education, based on a thorough review of the evidence, was very clear. Large numbers of schools with a high level of disadvantage in Northern Ireland are performing well above expectations in GCSE and A-level outcomes. It concluded:

"Both excellence and underachievement are to be found in schools with intakes at all levels of socio-economic disadvantage."

It is not alone in that conclusion. In a major international study, the programme for international student assessment (PISA) tells a similar story, concluding that the gap in achievement between pupils from the most advantaged backgrounds in Northern Ireland and those from less socio-economic advantaged homes was significantly smaller than the average across OECD countries.

In this context, therefore, is not the best assessment of educational underachievement found by looking at actual evidence of educational underachievement? Ideally, we would look at this across assessment at Key Stages 1, 2 and 3 as well as GCSE. Unfortunately, in recent years, we only have data at GCSE level. Members know the reason why. In recent weeks, I have reminded schools that there is a statutory requirement that they provide such information at Key Stages 1, 2 and 3. To be clear, that is not my requirement but a requirement set out in law, potentially enforceable by the courts. We do have GCSE and A-level results to enable us to analyse educational performance. Should we not use this data to target the areas with the lowest outcomes? Is this not entirely objective and sensible? Higher levels of qualification are strongly associated with better prospects in the labour market and in lifetime earnings. Individuals achieving five or more good GCSEs, including English and maths, as their highest qualification are estimated to have lifetime productivity gains worth around £100,000 on average compared with those of lower or no qualifications. Are interventions not needed to tackle directly poor educational attainment?

I remind the House too that free school meal entitlement is simply a proxy for socio-economic disadvantage, and, like all proxy measures, as every Member who has spoken about free school meals has said, it is not perfect. Socio-economic disadvantage is a complex, multifaceted concept. Free school meal entitlement is tied to only one domain, which is household income. It is based on benefit claims, so children from families that narrowly miss the cut-off point for receiving benefits — the working poor — may experience similar or greater levels of deprivation than some children who are receiving free school meals. In addition, many eligible families do not apply for them and therefore may be missing from the estimates. The RAISE programme is designed to use wide-ranging measures of socio-economic disadvantage to identify eligible areas and then pinpoint investment using educational attainment data.

Returning to RAISE itself, let us focus on the facts, because, after all, facts are far more stubborn than I can be.

Fact one: RAISE is a community-informed education programme, not a school-based programme. It therefore targets areas, not schools. It aims to promote a whole-community approach to education through place-based partnerships. It will fund interventions to improve educational outcomes for children and young people living in areas of disadvantage through joint working across communities, schools, government and the community and voluntary sector. It is not more of the same or simply meant to replicate the £80 million a year directed at schools to tackle socio-economic disadvantage. Rather, the programme was explicitly designed to take a place-based approach to education, the need for which was highlighted by the 'A Fair Start' report panel.

Fact two: the criteria to select the RAISE localities were data-informed, with all areas having to meet a threshold of need, evidenced by factors such as free school meal entitlement, educational outcomes and special educational needs.

Will the Minister give way?

Fact three: no funding has yet been allocated to any school or community partner through RAISE. Any commentary that schools have got funding — I have heard it from some Members in the Chamber today — is wrong. Moreover, any commentary that schools will be receiving funding is completely inaccurate and premature.

Fact four: a period of co-design is under way in advance of any funding decisions. Locality reference groups will be established in each of the RAISE areas. Each group will listen, discuss, reflect and reach consensus on a strategic plan for the area. Ultimately, my Department will fund local plans that identify the need for investment, that develop evidence-based interventions, that design a collaborative approach to delivery and that clearly measure impact.

The Committee Chairman wanted to make an intervention.

I thank the Minister for giving way. I welcome the reassurances that it is not a school-based programme, and we received those reassurances from your officials at Committee as well. Does the Minister accept, however, that publishing a list of schools has created confusion and a misunderstanding of how the programme will operate and that the Department now needs to do some work to reset the balance and perhaps improve communications around the programme?

The Member excluded to mention that some Members used the publication of the list to exploit a particular approach that they take to education. I have heard it today, with a particular focus on grammar schools. Publishing it certainly gave some Members an opportunity to exploit the list to make a particular point. I have addressed the issue of the publication of the list. I have said today that no school has received funding. Not one school has received any funding. Ms Hunter referred to taking money off the poor to give to the wealthy, but that is wrong. Mr Carroll referenced schools that had received funding in my constituency, but that is also wrong. They will not correct the record, I am sure, but facts are not debatable. Members are entitled to their opinion, but the facts speak for themselves.

A Member:

Will the Minister give way?

I may give way when I make some progress.

In the current extremely challenging financial climate, as Mr Sheehan rightly recognised, I am delighted to have secured £20 million of additional investment for communities in Northern Ireland through the Shared Island Fund. Much has been made of the selection methodology for the programme. As I have said, the approach that my Department took was data-led. It is robust and was objectively designed and delivered.

There were three key elements to the methodology. First, the aim is to have a regional programme and therefore invest in communities right across Northern Ireland. It is important that RAISE extend beyond the reach of Belfast and Londonderry in order to ensure that children in rural and coastal areas, who are also facing poverty and educational disadvantage, receive the support that they deserve. Members have highlighted some areas that are not included. I would love to have included every part of Northern Ireland, but £20 million is £20 million, and we therefore have to have criteria and a methodology for the scheme. Due to population size and level of disadvantage, however, I assure Members who represent Belfast and Londonderry that they will remain the most significant beneficiaries of the RAISE programme. Thirty-nine per cent of pupils identified by RAISE come from those two areas, despite their representing only 26% of Northern Ireland's population, yet it is vital that we address the massive challenges faced by some smaller, remoter parts of the country. Persistent patterns of rural underperformance have been overlooked.

Secondly, the programme used a broad range of indicators to identify localities that are experiencing high levels of educational underachievement. Superoutput areas across Northern Ireland were analysed using seven criteria. Free school meals was supplemented by measures of special educational needs, pupil attendance and GCSE achievement, as well as the Northern Ireland multiple deprivation measures of income, health deprivation and crime and antisocial behaviour. Those seven criteria were informed by discussions with a stakeholder reference group that was put in place to support delivery of the 'A Fair Start' actions.

Will the Member give way?

Whilst free school meals is an important indicator and was included, I make no apology for also wanting to examine indicators of health, crime and economic inactivity. Those are key factors in educational disadvantage.

Thirdly, the programme prioritised investment in the areas with lowest levels of attainment. Using the seven criteria created a shortlist of 256 eligible superoutput areas, with areas that had lower levels of attainment at GCSE then prioritised for investment. As the Minister of Education, I want all children and young people to reach their potential. Ultimately, the success of this programme will be determined by how well it improves educational outcomes, so it is absolutely right that I invest in the areas with the lowest levels of attainment. I therefore absolutely refute the assertion in the motion that the data is not objective. The RAISE programme targets children, not institutions. It directly targets investment at areas where there are too many children who leave after 12 years of schooling without the basic skills that are needed to succeed in life.

In conclusion —

Will the Member give way?

— I emphasise that the RAISE programme is a new approach. It is a programme that goes beyond the school gate. It aims to complement existing interventions and invest in communities that have the highest levels of educational underachievement. It is focused on improving outcomes, directly targeting investment where attainment is lowest. We are not using the single dataset of free school meal entitlement. I ask the House this: do we not need to tackle educational inequality by pooling resources, using evidence-based approaches and testing new ways of unlocking the barriers that hold young people back in the areas where the educational challenges are greatest?

I assure Members that the data behind RAISE is extremely robust, that it is evidence-informed and data-led and that it targets children based on evidence of deprivation and low achievement, because both are essential.

Will the Minister give way?

First, Members, a subtle reminder — it has been pointed out before — that, when a Member or Minister has not given way and is not giving way, there is no need to persist.

The Business Committee has arranged to meet at 1.00 pm. I therefore propose, by leave of the Assembly, to suspend the sitting until 2.00 pm. The debate will continue after Question Time, when the first Member to be called will be Nick Mathison to make a winding-up speech on the amendment.

The debate stood suspended.

The sitting was suspended at 12.59 pm.

On resuming (Mr Speaker in the Chair) —