Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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Question 152: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills in regard to a school (details supplied) in County Kerry, the next step to keep its teacher and resource teacher; the steps that have been taken and the steps that need to be taken; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15355/12]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The school referred to by the Deputy is a 4 classroom teacher school with 82 pupils. It will continue to be a 4 classroom teacher school in September 2012 with 83 pupils. It may lose a classroom teacher in September 2013. However, it can avoid this if its overall enrolment increases next September to 85 pupils. Under the new arrangements for GAM (learning support) the school has notified my Department that it will be the base school for a shared GAM/EAL post.

The new arrangements incorporate a long overdue updating of the GAM (learning support) allocation for all schools. This inevitably involves changes to existing clustering arrangements whereby a teacher is shared between schools. A further change is that schools in any locality are being empowered to cluster and arrange their GAM resources in a manner that best suits their local needs. This should be completed by schools in March.

There are also new and separate arrangements for how resource hours for individual pupils are converted into teaching posts in schools. The requirement for resource hours in a school varies from year to year depending on the number, if any, of its pupils with autism etc. Small schools generally have a lower requirement for resource hours. The new arrangements take account of the later timescale for the allocation of these hours necessitated by individual assessment by the NCSE.

All of the changes are designed to enable a more efficient operation of the teacher redeployment and recruitment and to reduce the impact of travel time between schools where teachers are shared.

My Department will be working with schools and the relevant education partners to ensure that the new arrangements operate as efficiently as possible. As the process proceeds this work can take account of any appropriate local arrangements that might be made to further optimise travel arrangements.