Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I recently announced that an additional 390 special needs assistant, SNA, posts had been made available to the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, to allocate to schools to the end of 2014, bringing the total number of SNAs available to 10,965. An additional 480 resource teaching posts have also been made available for the current school year, bringing to over 10,700 the number of resource teaching-learning support teachers in mainstream schools. This is a greater number of SNA and resource teachers than has been allocated at any time previously.

In May 2013 the NCSE published policy advice on supporting students with special needs in schools and made a number of recommendations to improve special education provision. At my request, it has developed proposals for a new model for the allocation of teaching supports to schools. I will consider these proposals carefully, with my colleagues in government, in order to establish how best we can continue to make improvements to special education provision.

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