Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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96. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he is considering restructuring the current process of allocating resource teaching posts in favour of a ratio system (details supplied) that would allocate a resource teacher based on the number of mainstream teachers employed in a school. [34054/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) recently published comprehensive policy advice on Supporting Students with Special Educational Needs in Schools, which is available on its website www.ncse.ie. The NCSE consulted widely with parents of children with special educational needs, representative bodies and the education partners in preparing this policy advice. Inter alia, the report recommends that under the new resource allocation model proposed by the NCSE in the report, children should be allocated additional resources in line with their level of need, rather than by disability category.

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. Mr Eamonn Stack, who is the NCSE Chairperson, will chair this working group and the group, which will include parents, will begin its work immediately. The 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.

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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97. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he is considering putting in place measures that will ensure that resource teachers and special needs assistants are not assigned to more than one school; and the reason special needs assistants are paid on a 32 hour basis when the primary school week is approximately 26 hours long. [34055/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) recently published comprehensive policy advice on Supporting Students with Special Educational Needs in Schools, which is available on its website www.ncse.ie. The NCSE consulted widely with parents of children with special educational needs, representative bodies and the education partners in preparing this policy advice. Inter alia, the report recommends that under the new resource allocation model proposed by the NCSE in the report, children should be allocated additional resources in line with their level of need, rather than by disability category.

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.

I wish to explain also that there is no system for shared Special Needs Assistant (SNA) allocations between schools. The NCSE Policy Advice does not recommend a significant change to the manner of allocating SNAs to schools, but recommends clarification of the role of an SNA. The Deputy may also be aware that my Department has published a Value for Money (VFM) and Policy Analysis Review of the Special Needs Assistant scheme, which is available on my Departments website: www.education.gov.ie.

The Review has shown that the SNA Scheme has been successful in supporting schools in meeting the needs of students with disabilities who also have significant care needs. However, the review also found that the allocation process is generally not well understood within schools and by parents nor is the purpose of the Scheme fully understood. The review recommended that the SNA scheme should be restated to ensure an efficient allocation of SNA resources and to clarify the 'care' nature of the SNA role for parents, schools and professionals. My Department has established a working group which is presently implementing the recommendations of the SNA Value for Money report.

The working week for full-time SNAs is defined in their contract (Department of Education and Skills Circulars 12/05 and 15/05). SNAs are required to work normal classroom hours including class break periods and in addition to attend before and after school in order to help with the preparation and tidying up of classrooms, reception and dispersal of children etc. The exact hours of work will normally be specified by the Board of Management in the SNAs contract of employment and may vary from school to school depending on the requirements of the school. In addition the contract for Special Needs Assistants in the post primary sector specifies that SNAs are required to work the month of June.

Furthermore, all SNAs were required to be available for a number of days at the start and finish of each school term not exceeding 12 in total. Under the Croke Park Agreement it was agreed to introduce greater flexibility to the use of these 12 days. These 12 days will now equate to 72 hours (pro-rata for part-time SNAs) to be used by schools as an additional bank of hours to be utilised and delivered outside of normal school opening hours and/or the normal school year. SNAs who are employed in a part-time capacity are obviously paid a pro-rata amount dependent upon their level of hours of employment. Part-time SNAs are paid on the agreed divisor rate for pay purposes for part-time SNAs which is 32 hours.