Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 943: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if a person (details supplied) in County Kildare will continue to receive two and a half hours resource teaching at a school (details supplied); and if she will make a statement on the matter. [10824/05]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The school in question has the services of two full-time resource teachers and a shared learning support teacher. It is a matter for the school to deploy these resources to meet the special educational needs, SEN, of the pupils in the school. It would be expected that this pupil's SEN can be met from within the current resource-learning support teaching allocation available to the school.

In light of the reality that pupils in the high incidence disability categories of mild and borderline mild general learning disability and dyslexia are distributed throughout the education system, my Department, in consultation with educational interests, developed a general model of resource teacher allocation to schools to support students in these disability categories. This model, which was announced by my predecessor in 2004 to come into effect from September 2005, was designed to put in place a permanent resource in primary schools to cater for pupils in these categories. I have made it clear that while I am in favour of using a general allocation model, I am conscious of the particular difficulties that the model announced last year could cause for small and rural schools if implemented as originally announced. For this reason I have asked my Department to conduct a review of the model announced last year. The review will be completed in the coming weeks and its outcome will be announced in time to be implemented for the next school year.