Michael McCarthy (Cork South West, Labour)
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Question 115: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of private psychologists who are currently registered on the panel for the scheme for commissioning psychological assessment; the number of psychological reports commissioned by parents under the scheme in 2009 and in 2010; the number of psychological reports from private practitioners in 2009 and 2010 which did not result in an application for a further service; the number of Irish primary schools who do not currently have a national educational psychological service; and the total number of psychologists employed directly by the National Educational Psychological Service. [12087/11]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I can inform the Deputy that all primary and post primary schools have access to psychological assessments either directly through my Department's National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) or through the Scheme for Commissioning Psychological Assessments (SCPA) which is administered by NEPS. Assessments are commissioned by the school authorities under the scheme and not directly by parents.

Schools that do not currently have dedicated NEPS psychologists assigned to them have access to through the SCPA under which school authorities can commission assessments from a member of the panel of private practitioners approved by NEPS, and NEPS will pay the fees directly to the psychologist concerned. Private practitioners must satisfy a number of requirements for membership of the SCPA panel including, obviously, qualification to carry out the required educational psychological assessments. SCPA allows one assessment per 50 pupils enrolled in the school. Currently there are 77 private practitioners listed on my Department's website on the SCPA panel.

The scheme was introduced as an interim measure to provide this alternative service in advance of NEPS reaching its target complement of psychologist staffing and in the light of increases in that staffing in recent years SCPA has diminished in its extent. In the 2009/9 and 2009/10 academic years my Department processed claims for 2,917 and 2,593 assessments respectively. A fee of €306 is paid in respect of each assessment on receipt of relevant certification from the school authorities involved and in the academic years referred to above some €0.89m and €0.79 was expended by my Department in this connection.

To date some 175 psychologists are currently directly employed within my Department's NEPS service and an additional three are due to take up duties shortly. Some 80% of Primary schools, representing 88% of primary pupils, currently have a NEPS psychologist assigned.

Psychological assessment takes a number of forms and is used for a number of purposes. The primary purpose of assessment by psychologists in schools is to identify the strengths and needs of pupils within the context of the school. The main outcome of such assessment is to advise and support teachers on appropriate interventions to address the needs identified. The interventions agreed may involve the utilisation of resources available to schools under the General Allocation Model or may be provided by means of additional resources applied for by the school through the National Council for Special Education.

Although NEPS has received, in the past two years just, copies of the reports furnished to schools on foot of the SCPA, this material is only used for the purposes of randomised quality control and NEPS has no overall information on the recommendations therein nor the resources that may have been forthcoming from the reports.