Eoghan Murphy (Dublin South East, Fine Gael)
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951. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills under the new profiling currently being undertaken for the provision of additional resources, if greater weighting is to be given to schools with pupils who are EAL, English as an additional language, over schools whose pupils are GAL, Gaeilge as an additional language; and her views on the fairness on this when similar difficulties present in both circumstances. [42137/14]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) published its Report on a Proposed New Model for Allocating Teachers for Students with Special Educational Needs on 18th June 2014.

The NCSE, consulted widely with education partners, representatives of the disability sector, stakeholders and parent representative groups, during the course of the development of this policy advice.

The report recommends that a new allocation model should be developed, based on a schools educational profile, while providing a baseline allocation to every mainstream school to support inclusion.

The report recommends that in developing educational profile of a school that account would be taken of:

The number of students with complex special educational needs in a school. Percentages of students performing below a certain threshold on standardised test results.Social context of school which includes gender, primary school location and educational disadvantage.

My Department is currently collecting information which will be required to develop the proposed new model. At this stage no decisions have been taken on the respective weightings to be allocated to individual criteria. Following consideration of this data, my Department will also consider whether, and from what date a new model might be implemented.

I also wish to advise the Deputy that following publication of the working group report, my Department invited education partners, stakeholders, and parent representative groups to make written submissions in relation to the NCSE report. 27 written submissions have been received to date, from interested parties.

My Department also held a number of consultation meetings on 1st and 3rd October last with stakeholders, education partners, and parent representative groups.

Consultation has been a key feature of the development of this policy advice to date and I can confirm that consultation will continue to take place at each stage of the development of proposals for any new model.