🧵 SET Allocations - are children being screwed over?

🧵 SET Allocations - are children being screwed over? 1/ Most people agree that despite the Department of Education claiming more SET hours (formerly Learning Support) are being given to children, it feels like we're getting less. I decided to get the facts. Let's get started!

2/ According to @forumteaching, 61% of principals say there are not enough SET hours being offered to their schools: principalsforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/NPF-FB-Update.pptx-1.pdf But are they right? [img:URvZdXlUz]

3/ In order to find out, I needed to get the data. SET Allocations are published on the NCSE's website and they are published in PDF format. I used @cloudconvert to change the 2017, 2019 & 2021 allocations into Excel files. [img:f5p7dd23D]

4/ Next, I needed the data on every school in Ireland. Thankfully the Department of Education helpfully supplies this in long Excel Sheets. Long story short, I sorted them into year groups 2017, 2019 and 2021. It was time to find out whether we're getting more or less support.

5/ The answer is..... It depends. Overall, when it comes to SET allocations, with consideration to enrollment changes since 2017, SET Allocations have gone up by 0.2% So the DoE aren't lying when they say there are more supports even if it is 0.05% per annum. However... [img:gif-fXZVp2HeE]

6/ Let's break it down a bit. Let's say by county. Some counties in Ireland have had a large increase in population since 2017. As you can see, despite a 4.66% increase in school-going population, Roscommon's allocations are almost 10% lower than they should be. [img:pqjM06bib]

7/ Not satisfied with being the county with the highest number of schools per capita being awarded STEM grants (twitter.com/simonmlewis/status/1737842387400139113) Co. Offaly tops the SET Allocations as well with 11.81% more allocations per pupil compared to enrollments. 🚨 Bad pun alert... [img:gif-AU50CvHF7]

8/ If we can give the DoE an error of margin of 2%, only 11 counties had an allocation that fell into that category. What conclusion can we make from that?

9/ The only conclusion to make when comparing counties is that it's a pointless thing to do. Essentially the algorithm was a nonsense. Schools should have received a relative SET allocation that coincided roughly with their relative enrollment figures to a point. So what next? [img:gif-ZjVh_3tPJ]

10/ The big question... were developing schools screwed over? I would have been shocked if developing schools weren't treated less favourably. However, it was how badly they were treated that blew me away 🤯

11/ Defining the formula for a developing school is difficult because the rules aren't straightforward so these figures are not 100% accurate but they won't be far off. And here they are....The top row is developing schools, the bottom non-developing schools. [img:FEOhxw2Uz]

12/ Essentially, despite having an average of 37.8% increase in population, the average allocation per pupil was 15.75% lower. In accounting for the enrollment rise, it means developing schools are on average getting 43.5% fewer SET hours. [img:gif-6X724aN2I]

13/ I've also done a comparison by patron, which isn't very useful and I'm happy to share the spreadsheet. I'll pop it on my newsletter next week. If you want it go to anseo.net/subscribe and it's all yours as I'm bound to have made some mistakes.

14/ The main takeaway is that, while there were slightly higher resources put into the system, developing schools lost out *majorly* as schools that lost enrollments maintained their allocations....

I hope this thread was of use. Please share it far and wide! twitter.com/simonmlewis/status/1750053074964558240