Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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783. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will allocate five hours learning support per mainstream teacher to a Delivering Equality of Opportunity in School (details supplied) in County Donegal, instead of the four hours' learning support per mainstream teacher that it currently receives; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [11478/15]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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784. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills her views that it is appropriate to discriminate against those girls who attend an all-girls' primary school in terms of learning support allocation, as an all-girls' school receives four hours' learning support per mainstream teacher, as opposed to five hours' learning support per mainstream teacher for mixed and all-boys' schools; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [11480/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 783 and 784 together.

I wish to advise the Deputy that differing teacher allocation ratios are applied under the General Allocation Model (GAM) in relation to boys, girls and mixed schools in order to account for differentials of prevalence of learning difficulty between boys and girls. The objective of this differentiation is to ensure that resources provided to schools to support children who have additional learning needs are targeted to ensure that those children most in need benefit from these resources.

The rationale for the differing ratios is based on international literature on the incidence of disability as well as international and national surveys of literacy and numeracy which indicate that there is a greater incidence of disability/learning difficulty in boys than girls.

The NCSE has published a report 'A study of the Prevalence of Special Educational Needs' which is available at www.ncse.ie and which contains details regarding the prevalence of special needs among the pupil population including noting gender differentials.

It should be noted that schools in Delivering Equality of Opportunity in School Band 1 category also receive an additional base allocation of 0.4 of a post if the school has 200 or more pupils or an additional 0.2 of a post if the school has less than 200 pupils.

Details of the GAM allocation process for schools for the coming 2015/16 school year are set out in Circular 05/2015, which is available on my Department's website at www.education.ie.

Finally, the recently published NCSE Report Delivery for Students with Special Educational Needs, which is also available at www.ncse.ie, recommended that a new resource teaching allocation model be devised for schools taking into account the profiled need of schools and the educational profile of a school. In doing so, the NCSE report recommended that gender should continue to be a factor in deciding on school profile for resource allocation purposes.