In June 2022 Drimnagh Castle Primary was designated to be a DEIS school. DEIS stands for Delivering Equality of Opportunity in School and means that we were able to: appoint a Home School Community Liaison coordinator; avail of the free School Meals Programme; and access a range of supports such as the School Completion Programme. These have all been of huge benefit to our school and the boys over the past year.
As a school, we have been working on a DEIS Plan which is now being introduced this year. There are six areas to the plan: Attendance, Retention, Literacy, Numeracy, Transitions, and Partnership with Parents and Others.
The first step of this process was to gather information. We did this by sending out questionnaires to the parents and guardians, and asking the boys to complete questionnaires in school as well as organising focus groups with them. This allowed us to gain a valuable insight into how we are doing in each of the six areas at present, and to set targets for how we can improve in the future.
The Plan was presented to the Board of Management at the start of the year and is available to view here:
We have also developed a version of the plan which is accessible to the boys and which we have been sharing with them at whole-school assemblies over the past few weeks. As the boys are at the centre of all we do in The Castle, this part of the process was particularly important to us. The boys’ version of the plan is also available on our school website.
Our DEIS Plan was reviewed by all the boys, parents/guardians and the staff in June 2024 and a revised plan was put into action for the 2024/2025 academic year.
In May 2025 the boys, parents/guardians and staff reviewed Year Two of our DEIS Plan, and we put into action our plan for the 2025/2026 academic year:
We also created an infographic to explain to the boys at assemblies our plan for the year:
