Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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121. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will consider reversing the cuts to special needs resources (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31166/13]

Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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122. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his views on correspondence (details supplied) regarding educational cuts to students with special needs; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31172/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 121 and 122 together.

I wish to advise the Deputy that the level of resources devoted to supporting children with Special Educational Needs has been maintained at €1.3 billion this year. This includes provision for 10,575 Special Needs Assistants (SNAs) and nearly 10,000 Learning Support and Resource Teachers. These resources have been protected despite the ongoing severe financial position.

In relation to the allocation of resource teaching support for schools from September 2013, demand for support has risen again this year, due to a combination of demographic growth and increased assessments.

Despite the fact that the overall number of posts available to the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) for allocation to schools had been maintained at existing levels, the allocations announced by the NCSE last week were reduced to take into account of the growth in demand, within the maintained number of posts, in order to ensure that equivalent allocations could be made for all qualifying children.

The Deputy will be aware that I announced yesterday that I have now authorised the NCSE to retain the level of resource teaching allocations which can be provided for students with special educational needs to the 2012/13 levels. This will mean that there will not now be any reduction to resource teaching time for children over the level which applied last year. I also committed to ensuring that the additional resources which will be required to ensure that the allocations can be made to schools at existing levels will be provided. The NCSE will shortly publish revised details of the Resource Teaching allocations for all schools, based on existing allocation levels, and will be advising schools of their revised allocations in the coming days. In the longer term, it is proposed to develop new allocations system to improve how we provide our allocations to school.

I am concerned that the scale of increased demand for resource teachers this year, if it were to continue, would make the current system unsustainable.

I am asking the NCSE to consider the reasons for the unprecedented 12 per cent rise in applications for resource teacher support this year, which compares with an annual 1.3 per cent increase in the number of students attending school in the current year.

The Deputy will be aware that the NCSE recently published comprehensive policy advice on Supporting Students with Special Educational Needs in Schools. I have, as suggested by the Report, requested the NCSE to establish a Working Group to develop a proposal, for consideration, for a `tailored' allocation model, which will underpin a new allocation system for teaching supports for children with Special Educational Needs based on the profiled educational needs of children in schools.

The Working Group will report to me in September on the progress of its work, to develop advice on how to reform the way the substantial additional educational resources for pupils with special educational needs are allocated in the school system.

In the interim, I wish to ensure that children will not be disadvantaged while we move towards a new model which will ensure greater fairness and quality of education for children with special educational needs. That is why I have made the decision to maintain the existing allocation levels this year.