Ms Helen Walsh:

I agree with the Deputy that delivery is where it is at, and delivery is where we intend to be. The Deputy mentioned the 50% of schools where the figures have dropped. We are aware that for some schools two hours is too much to drop. Other schools, however, can accept a five-hour drop. We knew that in a distributed system some schools potentially would have an excess of hours while other schools would not have enough. The intention of the model - I am possibly speaking from the Department's perspective here - was a more equitable distribution. Within the original model complex needs was not fairly represented. If one lived in a CHO area where children's disability network teams reported on the complex needs, then one was more likely to have additional hours. If one lived in an area where there was not the same level of assessment, by virtue of vacancy or whatever it may be, then one did not. The removal of the data of complex needs did not mean that the hours related to complex needs were lifted from the system. The hours stayed in the system. "Complex needs" as a definition is a kind of variable and was taken out of defining of the hours in the allocation for schools but the hours remained in. This does not mean the two hours or the loss of two hours does not affect a school. A school could be in a rural or a cluster situation and this is why the NCSE reviews and intends to look at precisely those situations where they are valid. If a loss of hours is significant and we see a need in that space, we will be responding to that.

What could be interesting for us this year is the data that will come back to us on the nature of the reviews. Ordinarily we would get a couple of hundred reviews on a yearly basis. We anticipate that we might need to review a lot more given the number of reviews this year as it is the first year of this new model. We fully expect a significant increase in the number of reviews that come out. There will be a data analysis around that, which we will feed back to the Department in that space. If we are seeing outcomes that are related to hours going back into those schools, that data will feed back to the model to improve and to further create another iteration of the model going forward.