Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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Question 96: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the implications in second level schools of the removal of the ex quota guidance counsellors; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40417/11]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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Question 97: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his views, if any, in the way school principals, in second level schools will deal with allocating hours to guidance counselling out of normal school teaching allocations; the impact this will have on them; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40418/11]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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Question 98: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his views at the removal of the guidance counsellor teacher allocation into the overall teacher allocation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40419/11]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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Question 99: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will consider reversing the decision which requires second-level schools to manage guidance provision from within their existing pupil teacher ratio allocations; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40420/11]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos 96 to 99, inclusive, together.

While difficult choices had to be made to identify savings across my Department's budget, the Government has tried to protect front line services in 2012.

The Government has protected the pupil-teacher ratio at primary level, prioritised targeted support for the most disadvantaged schools and maintained the overall number of resource teachers and SNAs to support children with special needs. Until now, a specific resource was provided for guidance in addition to the standard teacher allocation to post primary schools. In future, schools must meet their guidance requirements from within the overall resource provided by that normal staffing schedule. Individually schools can continue to make provision for guidance and counselling. Decisions on how this will be done will be taken at school level in the best interests of students and to ensure the best use of resources available. I am confident school management and teachers will continue to work together to meet the needs of the students in their care.

In this way, the main teacher allocation can be maintained at 19:1 for schools generally, while schools will have discretion to balance what they allocate for guidance against the competing demands of providing subject choice. The change that has been announced gives schools greater autonomy in how they allocate staff resources to best meet the needs of their students.

The change to guidance allocations must be seen in the context of the major challenges we have as a Government in trying to shelter public services to the greatest extent that we can in these exceptional times.

My Department will be notifying schools of the impact of the budget changes in January, 2012.

Pat Deering (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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Question 100: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason he chose to base the new general allocation model on the number of class teachers in a school and not on the number of pupils in a school; if his attention has been drawn to the fact that a two teacher school with 15 pupils will end up with ten hours support as opposed to a four teacher school with 106 pupils only getting 20 hours support even though that school has almost seven times the amount of pupils; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40423/11]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The new single allocation for the General Allocation Model (GAM) and language support will be based on the number of classroom teaching posts in each school in the previous school year. This simplified approach to (GAM) will make it easier to automatically update it annually in line with the changes in the number of classroom teachers in each school.

The staffing schedule is the long established method used for the allocation of classroom teachers to schools . It operates on the basis of enrolment bands using a general average of 1 classroom teacher for every 28 pupils or 1 classroom teacher for every 22 pupils in the case of DEIS Band 1 schools. The number of classroom teachers in each school is based on the relevant pupil threshold point under the published staffing schedule. In total there are over 20,000 classes in schools throughout the country.

While I acknowledge that there can be some variances between schools in relation to the number of pupils in their classes the simplified approach to (GAM) will make it easier to automatically update it annually particularly given that for many schools it has not been updated since it was first introduced in 2005.