Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, I thank Deputy Murnane O'Connor for raising this issue as it gives me an opportunity to outline the current position regarding special education provision. At the outset, I will stress that enabling students with additional needs to receive an education appropriate to their needs is an ongoing priority for this Government. My colleague, the Minister of State with responsibility for special education and inclusion, will continue to work to ensure that all children have an appropriate school placement and that the necessary supports are provided to our schools to cater for the needs of children with special educational needs.

It is important to remember that the vast majority of children with special educational needs are supported to attend mainstream classes with their peers. These children are supported to attend mainstream classes through the provision of special education teachers, SETs, and special needs assistants, SNAs, to our schools.

To support children with more complex needs, special classes in mainstream schools and special schools are provided. This year, the Department of Education will spend in excess of €2.6 billion, or over 27% of the Department's budget, on providing additional teaching and care supports for children with special educational needs.

For 2023, the Department of Education has further increased the number of special education teaching and SNA posts in our schools. There will be an additional 686 SETs and a further 1,194 SNAs in our schools by the end of this calendar year. For the first time ever, we will have over 19,000 teachers working in the area of special education and over 20,000 SNAs. Together, we have almost 40,000 qualified and committed people in our schools who are focused wholly and exclusively on supporting children with special educational needs. The children will undoubtedly benefit, as is right and proper, from the additional focus these resources will bring to their education.

Over the past three years, the Department of Education and the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, have introduced a number of strategic initiatives to plan for and provide sufficient mainstream, special class and special school places. These initiatives are bearing fruit with over 600 new special classes sanctioned at primary level, almost 300 new special classes sanctioned at post-primary level and five new special schools established over the past three years.

Budget 2023 also provides funding for additional staffing in both the NCSE and NEPS. Both of these measures will ensure that our schools and students benefit from additional practical supports from special educational needs organisers, SENOs, NCSE advisers and educational psychologists.

The special education teaching allocation provides a single unified allocation for special educational support teaching needs to each school, based on each school's educational profile. This model has replaced the previous model of allocating resource teaching support and learning support to schools based on a diagnosis of disability.

There are over 4,500 special education teaching hours for mainstream classes allocated across schools in County Carlow - 3,175 hours at primary and 1,475 hours at post-primary. Additional teachers are provided also for special classes.

The special education teacher allocation allows schools to provide additional teaching support for all pupils who require such support in their schools and for schools to deploy resources based on each pupil's individual learning needs. The allocation gives greater flexibility to schools as to how they can deploy their resources to take account of the actual learning needs pupils have as opposed to being guided by a particular diagnosis of disability, and schools are guided as to how they should make such allocation decisions.

See this speech in context