Debate contribution: RAISE: Failure to Tackle Educational Underachievement

Debate contribution by Mr Nick Mathison on 5 November 2024.

MLA

Mr Nick Mathison

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

5 November 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

RAISE: Failure to Tackle Educational Underachievement

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4631869

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I am glad to have the opportunity to make a winding-up speech on Alliance's amendment to the motion. While the original motion was highly critical of the RAISE programme's current approach to targeting and expressed no confidence that it would meet objective need, it seemed clear from the debate that there was some agreement on, at least, the principle that tackling educational underachievement should be a priority for the Education Minister. The disagreement was largely not around whether we should make the investment but on how the programme should invest and target the money. I suppose that, to an extent, we have some sort of starting point to work from.

I do not want to rehearse all the contributions to the debate, because there was broad agreement that the investment is welcome and that we want to see educational underachievement being tackled. I want to speak briefly on some of the Minister's comments. The Minister was clear that social disadvantage, poverty and deprivation is not the sole measure by which we can measure the likely prospects for educational attainment. I do not think that anybody across all the parties claimed that it was the only measure, but the point was made that that is the measure that is used in almost every other intervention that the Department makes. The Department's research, which was carried out this year on the back of the 'A Fair Start' recommendation, still came back and said that, until we come up with a better measure — the jury is still out on whether what the Department has come up with is a better measure — free school meals entitlement should remain as the one that is used. As my colleagues set out, our amendment sought to find a pragmatic way through those issues. We agree that socio-economic background is the clearest and most straightforward way to measure likely future educational attainment. We do not agree that the programme will absolutely and fundamentally not deliver on the basis of objective need. For some areas and many children who will benefit from the investment, it may well achieve that aim. If we went to a full design of an entirely new programme, I would be concerned that that could cause unnecessary disruption and delay. It is clear to me that the complex formula that the Department has used — I still do not think that that has been fully unpicked; it is not clear how all the different elements have been weighted — coupled with what I still maintain was the unhelpful publication of lists of schools that were potentially in the scope of the programme, has severely dented public confidence in the effectiveness of and rationale behind the targeting of the programme. At the very least, the Department needs to reset the narrative and clearly articulate how we have ended up in a place where confidence in the scheme is so low when it really should have been something that we all welcomed. Research shows that free school meals entitlement remains a reliable indicator of educational attainment. I worry that the more layers and nuance we add, the more complicated we make the picture. Colleagues have already referred to the Northern Ireland Audit Office report in 2021, which showed that, throughout a child's journey in the education system, free school meals entitlement remains a reliable guide to future prospects of educational attainment. I welcome and highlight the fact that it has been clearly articulated in the debate that it is not a schools-based programme. Hopefully, we can put some of that to bed. It is not pitting one school against another when it comes to who is in and who is out. We can, hopefully, all agree that the publication of the list was a deeply unhelpful intervention by the Department. It is welcome that local communities will receive investment and make their own decisions about how to direct it to improve educational outcomes. Any locally targeted programme will undoubtedly create winners and losers. Unfortunately, that is inevitable. There is no way that £20 million will reach every child in Northern Ireland. The challenge that we face here is that, in relation to the RAISE programme, people simply do not feel confident that the reasons that have been given are clear about why certain areas are being targeted and others are not. That is why we call on the Department at this early stage to review the criteria. If areas are excluded, yet we see the highest levels of deprivation being exhibited, the Department will need to look at it again. We need much clearer, much more robust reasons why that is the case. The Department should make the necessary changes to ensure that those living in our most deprived communities benefit most from the funding. When officials came to the Committee before recess to discuss the issue, they were at pains at that stage, as was the Minister today, to emphasise that decisions were not about excluding any area but were to focus clearly on educational attainment rather than solely on socio-economic deprivation and avoid duplication. The fact that we are debating the same issues today in almost exactly the same terms as they were rehearsed in Committee suggests that Members been not fully persuaded on those points. I will summarise by saying that I hope that the amendment receives support today. If supported, it would present a welcome reset of the debate. If the Department can come back in a timely fashion to update the House and the Committee on what it has done to address the concerns, to review the criteria and to ensure that the resource — the much-needed £20 million investment — is going to the communities and to the children and young people who need it most, we could revisit this with confidence that needs will be met on the basis of objective need.

984 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:30 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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