The DUP-led Department of Education is ignoring objective need when allocating funding to schools, the deputy chair of a Stormont scrutiny committee has said.
Sinn Féin MLA Pat Sheehan said questions remain unanswered around the Education Authority’s award of £710,000 to a Derry school to upgrade its soccer pitch to league standards.
He also voiced concerns about the eligibility criteria used to select schools that will benefit from the department’s RAISE programme to tackle educational underachievement and disadvantage.
Mr Sheehan said there was a “pattern of the Department of Education not using objective need as its main criteria for delivering funding”.
The west Belfast representative repeated his accusation that allocating funds to the Lisneal College soon after its principal met Education Minister Paul Givan alongside his DUP colleague and Communities Minister Gordon Lyons “smacks of cronyism”.
Mr Givan denied the accusation when it was made during a heated education committee meeting on Wednesday.
Mr Sheehan said he had “no difficulty” with any school making an application for funding.
“In fact, I would be very disappointed in any principal who wasn’t trying to secure the best possible facilities that he or she could for their own school,” he told The Irish News.
“The difficulty in all of this is that there’s only £29m available for minor works such as this from the Department of Education, and there are schools in my own constituency that could well do with this money, such as one in my own constituency that has made an application for minor works funding for a toilet block, which costs just £30,000, yet they are put through the ringer.”
The assembly education committee vice-chair said it appeared Lisneal College received “preferential treatment”.
In relation to the RAISE programme, he described the eligibility criteria as “complex and convoluted”.
In October, The Irish News revealed that through the programme funding would be directed to, among others, Friends School in Lisburn, which is ranked as having one of the most affluent enrolments in the north.
“In situations like this, where you’re going to tackle underachievement, you typically use the indicator of free school meals to identify where there is socio economic disadvantage,” Mr Sheehan said.
“What Paul Givan has done with the RAISE programme is create a new criteria so there will be a greater geographical spread of the funding but that means some of the most deprived areas in the north won’t be able to access this fund.
“I think there’s a pattern of the Department of Education not using objective need as its main criteria for delivering funding.
“Funding should go to where it’s most needed, and it’s very easy to identify where that objective need is and deliver funding accordingly. That isn’t happening.”
The Department of Education has been contacted for comment.
