Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)
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Question 461: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if she will meet with representatives of schools in north inner city Dublin to address their serious concern at the loss of resource hours in 14 primary schools in the area; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [36698/05]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Officials from my Department have discussed the concerns of these schools with the Irish National Teachers Organisation and requested that they send any information that they feel supports a case for additional special needs supports to my Department. We are awaiting full details in order that the case can be considered.

As the Deputy is aware, the general allocation of learning support-resource teachers, LS-RTs, is intended to cater for children with learning support and high incidence special educational needs. The system was constructed in order that LS-RT allocations would be based on pupil numbers, taking into account the differing needs of the most disadvantaged schools and the evidence that boys have greater difficulties than girls in this regard.

The new system has a number of benefits associated with it: it puts resources in place on a more systematic basis, thereby giving schools more certainty about their resource levels; it facilitates early intervention as the resource is in place when the child enrols; it reduces the need for individual applications and supporting psychological assessments and it allows flexibility to school management in the deployment of resources, leading to a more effective and efficient delivery of services.

In introducing the general allocation system transitional arrangements were also introduced whereby transitional hours were allocated to schools to cater for children for whom individual teaching resources had previously been allocated but which it would not have been possible for the school to continue to provide from its general allocation. In the circumstances no child should have experienced a loss of resource teaching support.

It is intended that a review of the general allocation model will be undertaken within three years of operation. There are now over 5,000 teachers in our primary schools working directly with children with special needs, including those requiring learning support. This compares to fewer than 1,500 in 1998. One out of every five primary school teachers is now working specifically with children with special needs.