Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Children with Down's syndrome whose level of intellectual disability places them in the mild general learning disability, GLD, range may receive individual resource teaching hours in the same manner as children with other low-incidence disabilities but they receive their support through the general allocation model, GAM. Schools have provision, under the GAM, to allocate and target resources to those children most in need of those resources and also to make the best use of those resources. Although not prescriptive, children with mild GLD will generally receive approximately 2.5 teaching hours per week under the GAM allocation. This provision is reflective of the resource teaching support which is provided for children with mild GLD prior to the introduction of the GAM.

Schools also have a discretion to supplement teaching support under the GAM through shared and group teaching for pupils with greatest need and where a child with Down's syndrome also had a diagnosis of moderate general learning disability and thus received an additional low incidence resource teaching allocation of 3.5 hours, the difference between that provided under the GAM, if the child was receiving 2.5 hours, would be one hour. However, the difference could be less if the school was supplementing teaching support under the GAM through shared and group teaching for pupils.

Can I beg the Ceann Comhairle's indulgence to complete the questions?

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