Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour)
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Question 197: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if any consideration has been given to the combining of learning support and resource teachers in rural areas when clustering would mean that the teachers would have to spend a prolonged amount of time commuting between schools instead of being in the class rooms with the pupils; if rural schools have been consulted about the changes to the arrangements; if any consideration has been given to the differences between rural schools and urban schools in relation to these new rules; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3545/12]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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Question 233: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if his attention has been drawn to the disproportionate impact that the decoupling of learning support and resource hours will have on small schools; if he will review this policy decision; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4036/12]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 197 and 233 together.

The new simplified approach to the General Allocation Model of support for schools will make it easier to automatically update it annually in line with the changes in the number of classroom teachers in each school. Schools will also have autonomy on how to deploy the resource between language support and learning support depending on their specific needs. The arrangements for the staffing allocation under the General Allocation Model (GAM) are specifically designed to facilitate GAM hours being clustered into full-time posts – either entirely within their own school or with a nearby neighbouring school.

The new GAM allocations are being done in 5-hour blocks which is the equivalent of the tuition time for a full school day. Teachers that are in shared posts between schools can therefore operate local arrangements that enable their travel to a neighbouring school to be done, where possible, from the start of the school day thus avoiding loss of tuition time.

As part of the reforms to the teacher allocation process existing posts will be used to put in place a network of about 2,450 full-time resource posts in over 1,600 base schools throughout the country that will be allocated on a permanent basis. This approach builds on the interim arrangements that operated in 2011 but in a more structured and transparent manner. The annual changes in resource hours at individual school level will only affect where the teacher is working on any one day – not whether the base school continues to host the full-time post. This approach will introduce a greater constancy in the context of the annual allocations and redeployment process.

The teachers in these full-time resource posts will undertake NCSE approved (low incidence) resource hours in the base schools or in neighbouring schools. Schools are typically notified of their NCSE approved resource hours in the late Spring/early Summer period but also throughout the school year.

Through his/her role in allocating resources the local SENO will have an oversight role in relation to the sharing arrangements between schools so that they can operate as efficiently as possible and any time loss due to travel between schools can be kept to a minimum. Schools that are unable to access their NCSE approved resource hours from this network of full-time resource posts will be allocated mainly part-time temporary posts.