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

I am delighted that the Seanad has chosen to discuss this area of public policy. I think the Oireachtas can be proud of what we have done in the area of special education. Despite the very difficult environment in which we have been working in recent years, we have consistently increased the resources in the area. Since 2011, the provision in special education has been increased by about 43% and well over €1.5 billion of the education budget goes into special education provision, which is considerably larger than, for example, the allocation to higher education. We have made a very serious policy commitment to provide integrated opportunities for people with special education needs to succeed and to progress through education.

I do not want to spend too much time on the type of provision but basically we seek to have an inclusive and integrated model wherever we can. In excess of 60% of children with ASD are in mainstream classes, approximately 20% are in special classes within mainstream schools, and 20% are in special schools. That tends to be the distribution. There is clearly a hope that we can have as many as possible in mainstream education.

We now have more than 14,000 SNAs, an increase of 33% since 2011. We have approximately 13,500 special education teacher posts, representing a similar increase since 2011. Special classes are becoming more prevalent and the number has increased by considerably in excess of 100%, from 548 in 2011 to more than 1,300 now, which is a very substantial expansion. Initially much of that was at primary level, but increasingly we are seeing that move on to a very significant expansion of ASD units at second level. We have 124 special schools with about 7,500 students. As Senators know, the pupil-teacher ratio in special units is much more favourable at 6:1, with two SNAs. These are very specialist support areas. That expansion has required the Department to invest in facilities to back that up.

I know the Education (Admissions to Schools) Bill is yet to come to the Seanad. That Bill allows either Tusla or the NCSE to require a school to take an individual student. On Report Stage we will introduce an amendment allowing the NCSE after a number of steps to require a school, by way of ministerial order, to open an ASD unit or a special unit. That is a new power to ensure we can continue to expand the provision.

We may also make changes to the way we allocate money. In September, we introduced a new model for allocating resource teachers. The aim of the model was to frontload into schools the number of resource teachers they would need based on the profile of individual schools. We put in extra resources to ensure we could do that in a way that no school would lose. That is the first time we moved from the need to have a diagnostic report to trigger resource teaching. Instead we are gearing up the schools based on the expected profile of individual schools and not only does the school now have more resources to meet the need, but it has moved away from this labelling approach. While labelling was unnecessary in many cases, sometimes diagnoses are very helpful for teaching. The model has moved away from unnecessary labelling where it could be avoided. It has also promoted more of a whole-school approach to integrating special education. It gives school principals more discretion to decide whether one-to-one, group or mainstream teaching should be used to provide that extra support. I have visited schools using this new approach and it has been very warmly received. People tell me it is not only good for the children with special needs, but that it is good for the entire school and gives a much more integrated approach to delivery.

Senators will also be interested in the area of special needs provision. For many years this provision has been allocated very late in the year, often in June at the end of the school year. The system was that the Minister had to go back to Cabinet to get approval for a new financial allocation; it had not been built into the Estimates. This year, for the first time, we have built it into the Estimates and we hope to be able to announce the allocation to schools within the next few days, allowing for much better planning.

The NCSE is close to completion of its work to review the special need assistance programme to ascertain if we are delivering to meet the children's needs in the best possible way.They have done much work on this. The recent pilot which we announced on Monday gives an indication of the direction of their thinking. This year, for 75 schools and 75 preschools in the west Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare area, CHO 7, we will introduce a scheme whereby we embed speech and language resource and occupational therapy resource within a network of schools. They will service a network of 150 institutions including preschools, special schools and primary and secondary schools. Based on good exemplars, we believe that not only can better one-to-one support be provided, but one can develop programmes whereby teachers, special needs assistants, SNAs and parents can provide continuity between one-to-one sessions that a child might have with a speech and language therapist. That can transform the learning environment by establishing continuity rather than occasion access to the therapists followed by a long gap and a drop off and so on; it will integrate the therapy. While it is a pilot, it gives a direction of the thinking coming from the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, that we can do better if we bring new expertise to bear within the school setting on a professional partnership basis between the SNAs, teachers and parents with a professional, allowing us to better deliver to students' needs. That is in progress. Based on the success of the resource teaching model, which has been well received, we hope to develop it over time.

I mentioned the admissions Bill, to which we are making changes.

The NCSE is the independent leader and it decides where a child is looking for a school place. It uses its special education needs organisers, SENOs, to support parents in getting access to the appropriate setting. If, for any reason, they do not get an appropriate setting, home schooling opportunities are available. Some 1,700 pupils avail of home tuition although generally children wait for a suitable school placement. We are taking new powers to support the NCSE in making sure that schools will develop. We are very determined that no school will turn away a child because of their special education need or decline to participate in providing a special unit if that school is the most appropriate location for delivery.

The other service which is key to this is the national education psychological service. Under the programme for Government, we have committed to expanding this service. It is a really important piece of the infrastructure. We currently have 180 whole-time equivalent psychologists in the service. We are steadily expanding the service with the development of well-being programmes in each school.

The final piece of the jigsaw is school transport. That is a very significant investment. About 12,000 children with special needs avail of the school transport scheme at a cost of €88 million. We make a significant investment there so that children have transport to the most suitable school.

It is an area in which we have done a lot. One of the ambitions for the future is to really focus to make sure that we also deliver on good outcomes. Our inspection service show very good methodologies being deployed. We need to ensure that as we deepen the resource commitment and improve its allocation that we see gains in children staying on more, developing their independence skills, and progressing to other opportunities. That is an area where we need to do more analysis and develop the methodologies to record that progress and establish good objective benchmarks for evaluating policy initiatives and alternatives.