Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 8 May 2024
199. Deputy Michael Lowry asked the Minister for Education if she will provide assistance to a school (details supplied) regarding the payment of the 2024 ancillary grant and information that was forwarded to schools on Friday, 26 April 2024; the steps being considered to address the issues highlighted; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [20455/24]
View answerMy Department is committed to providing funding to recognised primary and post-primary schools in the free education scheme by way of per capita grants. The two main grants are the Capitation grant to cater for day to day running costs such as heating, lighting, cleaning, insurance, general up-keep etc. and the Ancillary grant to cater for the cost of employing ancillary services staff. Schools have the flexibility to use capitation funding provided for general running costs and ancillary funding provided for caretaking and secretarial services as a common grant from which the Board of Management can allocate according to its own priorities.
Correspondence issued to all schools on 26th April detailing the calculation of ancillary grant funding for 2024. Schools provided the Department with details of the salaries they paid to grant-funded secretaries who transferred to the Department’s payroll from September 2023. This information was used to revise the ancillary related grant funding due to these schools for January to August 2024.
As confirmed previously, work is ongoing to identify a method of standardising the reduction to the Ancillary Services Grants for the longer term where school secretaries are being paid on the Department payroll.
The school referred to by the Deputy received their ancillary grant funding on 29th April 2024 and has made contact directly with my Department. Officials from my Department will be in contact with the school to address their concerns as soon as possible.
The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) grant scheme was an action in the new STEM Education Implementation Plan published in 2023. The grant is to support schools in carrying out projects to stimulate an increased interest in STEM and included an application process as with other STEM initiatives in the past such as the STEM clusters project.
As you are aware the initial funding available at the time of the call for applications was €1.5 million. Given the high demand from schools, the Department worked to secure as much additional funding as possible, bringing the total available to €4.7 million. Unfortunately, on this occasion, the funding fell short of the ask of over €25 million.
Given the very high number of valid applications and the budget available for the scheme, a decision was made by the Department to run a lottery on this occasion. It is hoped that a further round of funding can be run this year which means that eligible schools that were not successful this time may receive funding in the future. In relation to any future funding that becomes available, the Department will be in contact with schools.
