Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies for their contributions. As they correctly pointed out, I have already spoken to most of them on this matter. A number of different misperceptions have been presented in the House and I hope I can address them.

First, there have not been any cuts to special education teacher, SET, posts. There are now more SETs than ever before. This year there will be 14,600 SETs, which is an increase of 1,000 from last year. In the past ten years the number of SETs has doubled to the record figure of 14,600. It is also important to remember that this model does not change the fact that 90% of children with additional needs are in mainstream provision. This is a distribution model to ensure that the children with the greatest level of need in mainstream education can get access to additional teaching support. It provides a transparent means of allocating SET resources to best meet the needs of children and ensure consistency and equity in the system.

Deputies will be aware that this model was introduced in 2017 and there was some criticism after that so the model was updated in 2022, based on feedback from schools and stakeholders. Any updates to the model since then do not change the key principle, which is that the teacher and school know best which children require SET support.

The 2017 model was not updated every year, but rather every two to three years. The model did not keep pace with mainstream allocations and changes to school populations and therefore special education need, SEN, profiles in the school. This was especially true of developing schools, which are those that are rapidly increasing enrolments. As the demographics moved from primary age to post-primary age, there was no mechanism to move the SET support to where it was most needed. Schools expressed concerns that the supports from the HSE to include speech and language therapy and occupational therapy were not routinely available. Therefore there was concern that the HSE would not have a full understanding of the complex needs in the school. Schools were also concerned that some children in their schools were on waiting lists with the HSE and they would not be reflected in the HSE data, even if the data was returned in full. Schools also reported that girls had SENs but these were largely masked or undiagnosed in younger age groups unless they were very complex. Complex needs in girls tend to appear at a later age, but manifest in different ways, including later.

As a number of assertions have been made about the lack of engagement, it is important to stress again that a total of 30 meetings were held as part of the development process, which included 12 consultation sessions that were held with education partners, including management bodies and staff representatives, in the development of the updated model. There was significant engagement with education partners on this. In addition, the NCSE undertook approximately 40 reviews with individual schools to get their feedback for incorporation into the updated model. There have been assertions that complex needs will not be taken into account. That is not correct. The complex needs that were provided for by the HSE since 2017 have been inconsistent, increasingly so in recent years. The data on complex needs was sourced from the HSE which had developed criteria to determine eligibility for access to the children's disability network teams, CDNTs.

For 2023 to 2024, only 5% of verifiable data was returned from the CDNTs despite numerous follow-ups. This meant that for schools for which no data was returned, even when there was a significant need, they would lose resources to those small schools for which there was a return. This created as a by-product a serious inequity in the distribution of resources.

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