Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will try to give the Deputy what information I have. It presents a picture that is better than the one she has painted. Therefore, I would like to see the south Kildare data.

Overall, there are 14,000 students with ASD in the school system, of whom some 63% are educated in mainstream classes, 23% in special classes in mainstream primary and post-primary schools and 14% in special schools.

The position on special classes, an issue the Deputy raised in particular, is that the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, recently published a list of special classes for the coming 2016-17 school year. In total, 1,153 special classes will be available. This represents an increase of over 100% on the number of special classes available in 2001. There will have been 605 additional special classes provided, many of them for students with ASD. The number of ASD classes at primary level in the 2016-17 school year will be 652, which represents a 15% increase approximately on the 2015-16 figure. In one year there has been a 15% increase in the number of classes. Therefore, there is substantial expansion occurring.

There should be no child with special educational needs who cannot find a school place because the NCSE will assess the needs of each child with special educational needs. Many are accommodated in mainstream classes, but in each case the child will be assigned the required resource teaching and SNA supports in order that he or she can participate in class. As I stated, there is an increasing trend towards the provision of special classes. There has been growth of 100% in the space of just five years. What I have outlined represents growth of over 20% per year. As this represents substantial expansion, I would be disturbed to think the picture was different in south Kildare. The rights I have described are automatic and there have been no constraints. The schedule from which these resources are applied was reduced at the height of the recession in 2012, but the number of resource teachers in the system has been increased. The number of SNAs has increased by almost 22%, while the number of resource teachers has expanded by 9% in just one year. Therefore, it is growing very rapidly. Close to €1.5 billion of our budget is devoted specifically to special education.

The EPSEN Act is the gold standard for the personal education plan for each child and we are moving towards it. Each school is expected to have a personal plan for each child. It is a legal requirement, but until we have rolled out the infrastructure to underpin it, it will be hard to trigger the Act, as it stands. However, it is certainly the target we are trying to reach.

I will undertake to obtain more data, specifically for County Kildare.

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