Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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485. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason her Department is putting the onus on teachers to gather information regarding the economic circumstances of parents for the educational resource centre questionnaire which forms part of the basis for the allocation of special educational needs teachers next year; the reason this information is not ascertained from the relevant Government bodies; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [38051/14]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that my Department is currently considering potential revisions to the system of allocating Resource Teaching and Learning Support to schools. This is on foot of recommendations set out in the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) Policy Advice on "Supporting Students with Special Educational Needs in Schools (May 2013) and the recommendations of the NCSE Working Group Report "A Proposed New Model for Allocating Teaching Resources for Students with Special Educational Needs".

Following the publication of these reports, my Department advised that it would commence the process of gathering information which would be required to develop the proposed new model, to allow its impact to be assessed, and to assess if, and from when, the model could be implemented.

Part of this process involves the collection of information in relation to the social context of schools.

The working group report recommended that a school's social context should be used because it can contribute strongly to the level of learning needs that students have. The report considered that, on the basis of available research evidence, the use of a school's social context is valid in developing an educational profile, as socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with the incidence of certain types of special educational needs, including low achievement in academic learning and emotional or behavioural disorders.

The report also noted that a school within a disadvantaged social context may have a higher share of students presenting with emotional or behavioural disorders. While some of these needs are likely to be reflected in low test scores, others may not, as students with relatively high levels of educational achievement can have emotional and behavioural disorders.

Accordingly, it was recommended that consideration of a schools social context should form part of any proposed new resource allocation model.

In considering how a social context profile might be developed for schools, the working group noted that the Department currently holds information which underpinned the development of the Developing Equality in Schools (DEIS) schools programme. However, this information dates from 2005, and was not considered by the Working Group to be current enough to provide a social context component for any new SEN Resource Teacher/Learning support allocation model.

The group therefore recommended that a new social context schools survey should be conducted.Pending the availability of a more objective source of information, the working group stated that it was confident that survey reporting by school principals could produce robust up to date data on school context in a similar manner to DEIS and earlier initiatives.

The Department therefore, in conjunction with the NCSE, asked the Educational Research Centre (ERC) to conduct a survey of schools to assist the development of an educational profile.

It was considered that the issuing of a new survey was a preferable option to using existing data from 2005, or data from limited sources that may not capture the full current complexity of a schools school's make up.

Though recognising that all schools would not be able to have specific detail regarding all of the questions asked in relation to their pupil populations, schools were asked to provide their best possible estimates in relation to the questions being asked in the survey, in order to ensure that as accurate as possible a social context allocation component of any revised allocation model could be developed for each school.

At all stages of the development of the advice and in particular in the work of the working group there was comprehensive consultation with education partners and stakeholders and through this consultation there was awareness and broad support for the proposed approach including the deployment of a survey.

The data which schools were requested to return as part of the survey was non-personal, anonymised data. Schools were not asked to return data in relation to the social circumstances of individual pupils.

Schools were also advised that the ERC had put in place a dedicated phone help line in order to provide assistance and support to schools in completing the questionnaire. I understand that many schools used this help line to gain assistance in completing the questionnaire.

Whereas I understand that the return of this survey has caused extra work and some difficulties for some schools, I am confident that having up to date social context data will be highly beneficial to the Department and the NCSE in developing proposals for a new profiled allocation model for schools.