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

I share the Deputy's belief that this is an important area. I am glad to say it is a growing area because the Department has been paying increasing attention to it in recent years. Funding for special education provision in 2016 will amount to €1.5 billion, which is equivalent to over 17% of the gross overall current allocation for education and training. There has been an increase of 10% in spending in the past two years. This funding provides for a range of supports and services, including additional learning and resource teaching support, access to the support of SNAs, special transport arrangements, building adaptations, enhanced capitation in special schools and special classes, specialised equipment, additional teacher training and the services of the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS. Some 12,900 SNAs are available for allocation to the end of 2016. This represents an increase of 23% on the number in 2011. There are more than 12,400 learning support and resource teacher posts in mainstream primary and post-primary schools at present.

  The National Council for Special Education has allocated 7,430 resource teacher posts to schools for the 2016-17 school year. This represents an increase of 41% in the number of resource teachers who have been allocated since the 2011-12 school year. In excess of 5,000 learning support posts are allocated to schools under what is called the general allocation model and the learning support allocations for post-primary schools.  Approximately 150 new special classes will be opened for the 2016-17 school year. This means there will be more than 1,150 special classes in place compared with 548 special classes in 2011. The rapid growth in this area is reflected in our budget provision. It was announced as part of last month's budget that I am providing for well in excess of 1,000 additional staff, between SNAs and resource teachers, for next year. I also announced that following development and piloting over recent years, a new model for the allocation of teaching resources for children with special educational needs will be implemented from September 2017.

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