Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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12. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to address concerns over the long waiting times for special needs assessment by the National Educational Psychological Service; and if he will implement the new system of allocation of resource teaching hours, which is currently being piloted on a national basis, in September 2016. [10836/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Support from the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, is available to every recognised primary and second-level school in Ireland. NEPS, in consultation with schools, prioritises children for support, consultation and-or assessment who have failed to make adequate progress despite an appropriate continuum of support being delivered for those children.

Under its model of service, NEPS focuses on building school capacity by encouraging schools to engage in initial assessment, educational planning and remedial intervention for pupils with learning, emotional or behavioural difficulties. Teachers may consult their NEPS psychologist should they need at this stage in the process. Only in the event of a failure to make reasonable progress, in spite of the school's best efforts in consultation with NEPS, will the psychologist become involved with an individual child for intensive support.

I believe that the support NEPS provides to schools and students is vitally important. The programme for a partnership Government has committed to invest additional resources in this area with the objective of bringing total staff up to 238 educational psychologists, an increase of 25% over the lifetime of the Government. This will allow NEPS to increase its level of support to schools.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

The National Council for Special Education has a statutory role under the Education of Persons with Special Educational Needs Act to provide me with policy advice on matters concerning the education of persons with special educational needs.

The NCSE identified that the current model for allocating resource teachers to schools is potentially inequitable because access to the range of professional assessments required for the diagnosis of low incident disabilities is not always readily available to those who cannot afford to access them privately. The NCSE has also advised that the current model can lead to unnecessary labelling of children from a young age.

The NCSE has proposed a new resource teaching allocation model which will, when introduced, remove the formal requirement for diagnostic assessment to access additional support.

A pilot of the model is taking place across a number of schools in advance of implementation in the school system generally. As the pilot is still under way it will not be possible to implement the new model in all schools for the coming school year.

The pilot has been developed in order to test the model and to allow for the practical effect of the application of the new model in the 47 pilot schools to be evaluated.

A review of the pilot has now commenced. This will also allow us to take into account the learning experiences of schools, principals, pupils and the views of parents over the course of the pilot.

On conclusion of the review a decision will be taken on the timeframe for the full implementation of the proposed new allocation model.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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This question was submitted before I was appointed and is very similar to the first question we put down. There is probably no particular need to further discuss it today, except to say that the issue of these long waiting lists is an absolutely critical one the Government must address, along with the point that we discussed earlier, that the needs of the child must be central to all of this and not necessarily the demographics if the waiting lists are to be addressed and if everybody is to have equal access to those assessments.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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As we discussed earlier, we are approaching this in a number of ways and we are planning to increase the staff in NEPS by 25%. We are also considering the model of allocation of resource teachers to try to move away from the requirement to have these assessments for every child and to move to a situation where the school itself, having regard to the range of children, even those who have not yet had assessments, would win the allocation of resources. We hope that would take a bit of pressure off and make sure that children whose parents do not have access privately to a psychologist are not put at a disadvantage. We hope this model will improve by increasing the resources, making it a simpler and more friendly model for parents and their children and improving the outcomes for everyone.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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It is an issue which we have debated a number of times today and to which I will return in my role.

I thank the Minister for his courtesy to me today on my first day in this spokesmanship.