Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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536. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the correct procedure to be followed in appealing a recent decision to refuse support for resource teaching hours and special needs assistance in the case of persons (details supplied) in County Kildare [24639/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The Deputy will be aware that the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) is responsible, through its network of local Special Educational Needs Organisers (SENOs), for allocating resource teaching and Special Needs Assistant (SNA) support to schools to support children with special educational needs and additional care needs, respectively.

The NCSE operates within my Department's criteria in allocating such support.

All schools were asked to apply to the NCSE for resource teaching and SNA support for the 2015/16 school year by 18th March, 2015.

The NCSE has now published details of the resource teaching allocations which will be made to each school for September 2015 on its website www.ncse.ie.

Schools will be advised of their revised SNA allocations for the 2015/16 school year once the consideration of all applications has been completed by the NCSE.

Details of the manner in which a school or parent may appeal the level of SNA or resource teaching allocation which has been made to support a child in school, to the NCSE, is set out at www.ncse.ie.

All schools have the contact details of their local SENO, while Parents may also contact their local SENO directly to discuss their child's special educational needs, using the contact details available on www.ncse.ie.