Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The National Council for Special Education, NCSE, working group recommended the development of a new model for delivering teaching resources to schools to support students with special needs. It recommended that a school's special needs teaching allocation should be determined by a baseline component according to pupil numbers and a school's educational profile. This profile is to take account of the number of pupils with complex needs, the percentage of pupils performing below average in standardised tests and the social context and gender breakdown of the school. Following consultations with education partners last summer, my Department has developed a new model which could be used to allocate special needs teachers to schools. The Department last week engaged in a further round of consultations with stakeholders on the new model.

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