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

There was no reduction in the resource hours given to the schools. There were extra supporting materials for the schools and the testing of the pupil planning process and the outcome of reporting. There were not unlimited resources. They have received their resource allocation for 2015-2016 and schools that might gain under the new model presumably would have got extra resources.

This is a pilot and the purpose is to learn from it. If the message the Deputy raises comes back from schools about the two-year review, it will be heeded. We want to learn as much as we can about how the new model works this year. That is why the sample schools are a mix of different social backgrounds etc. We want to see if practical issues come up in the pilots and apply the lessons from those.

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