Seán Haughey (Dublin North Central, Fianna Fail)

I am taking this Adjournment on behalf of my colleague Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, Minister for Education and Science.

I thank Deputy Upton for raising this issue as it provides me with the opportunity to clarify the position on this matter. The first and most important point I wish to make is that all pupils with a mild general learning disability will continue to have additional teaching resources to support their education. There will be no pupil with a special educational need who will be without access to a special needs teacher as a result of the decision to apply the normal rules which govern the appointment and retention of teachers of special classes for pupils with a mild general learning disability.

All primary schools have been allocated additional teaching resources to enable them support pupils with high incidence special educational needs including mild general learning disability. Each school was given these additional teaching resources under the general allocation model of learning support-resource teaching introduced in 2005.

I emphasise that these additional teaching resources have not been withdrawn from any school. Schools can decide how best to use this allocation based on the needs of the pupils. Most pupils with a mild general learning disability are included in ordinary classes with their peers and are supported by their class teacher. The curriculum is flexible so that teachers can cater for the needs of pupils of different abilities. This policy of inclusion has widespread support within the educational community. Schools can use their resource-learning support allocation to give pupils special help if they need it. This might be done with a teacher working with a group of pupils or on a one-to-one basis for a few hours each week.

Before the general allocation model was introduced, some schools grouped pupils with a mild general learning disability into special classes. The Deputy will be aware that allocations to schools typically increase or decrease depending on pupil enrolment. In the case of special classes for pupils with a mild general learning disability, the normal pupil teacher ratio that applies is 11:1. My Department, however, allows for a small reduction in this number and permits a school to retain a teaching post where it has a minimum of nine pupils in the class. The rules also provide that a teacher would no longer be allocated where the number of pupils fell below nine.

In a number of schools in Dublin 8 and Dublin 10, the number of pupils dropped below this minimum and the schools no longer qualify for the teaching posts in these classes. This was the sole criteria for selection of schools in this regard.

In 2005, when the general allocation model was introduced, schools with additional teachers in classes for mild general learning disability were allowed to retain the teachers for these classes. Effectively, these schools received a double allocation. The number of these special classes has decreased over the years and schools have integrated the pupils into age-appropriate mainstream classes. All of the other primary schools in the country which do not have classes for pupils with mild general learning disability cater for these pupils from within the general allocation model.

As I have previously stated, the Minister is open to listening to proposals from schools where they can demonstrate that it is educationally more beneficial for the pupils involved to be in a special class of their own rather than to be integrated with their peers and supported by the mainstream classroom teacher and the learning resource teacher, as the Deputy has referred to. I understand that correspondence has been received in my Department from a number of schools in Dublin 10 in this regard. My Department will be in direct contact with these schools on this matter.

There has been unprecedented investment in providing supports for pupils with special needs in recent years. There are now approximately 19,000 adults in our schools working solely with pupils with special needs. There are over 8,000 resource and learning support teachers in our schools compared with just 2,000 in 1998. Over 1,000 other teachers support pupils in our special schools.

I take this opportunity to emphasise that priority will continue to be given to provision for pupils with special educational needs. The establishment of mild general learning disability classes pre-dates many of the developments in special education policy in recent years and we now have a system for providing schools with supports for pupils with high incidence special needs through the general allocation model.

The natural sympathy we all have for pupils with special needs and their parents makes it all the more important that we do not cloud facts with emotion. The parents of all children with mild general learning disability need to know that their children in mainstream classes are getting a quality education delivered by committed class teachers and supplemented by additional support from the resource and learning support teachers. This is happening every day in schools across the country and will continue to happen.

The Department of Education and Science has received correspondence on this matter from a number of schools in Dublin 10 and that correspondence is under consideration. I thank the Deputy for giving me the opportunity to outline the position on this matter.

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