Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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295. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if there will be no further reductions in the learning support services in schools in Dublin 15; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10099/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Since September 2012 the combined resources available for learning support (General Allocation Model at Primary) and language support have been merged into a single simplified allocation process.

The GAM/EAL arrangements for the 2016/17 school year are set out in Circular 0007/2016 and are based on a school's mainstream classroom posts for the 2015/16 school year. Circular 0007/2016 lists the GAM/EAL allocation for all schools.

Schools have autonomy on how to deploy the resource between language support and learning support depending on their specific needs.

I wish to advise the Deputy that some €1.37 billion will be spent in support of children with Special Educational Needs this year, which represents approximately 15% of my Department's budget.

This provides for a range of supports and services including additional learning and resource teaching support, Special Needs Assistant (SNA) support, special transport arrangements, building adaptations, enhanced capitation, funding for the purchase of specialised equipment, services of the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS), enhanced levels of capitation in Special schools and Special Classes and additional teacher training.

We now have a higher level of Resource Teaching and SNA support than ever before.

In July last, it was announced that an additional 610 Special Needs Assistant posts are being provided for in the current school year. There are currently 11,820 whole time equivalent SNA posts available in Primary, Post Primary and Special schools to support children with special educational needs with assessed care needs. This is the highest level of SNA allocation that we have ever had. These extra posts will ensure that the Government's policy of ensuring that every child who is assessed as needing SNA support will receive access to such support.

In addition, the NCSE has established over 150 new Special Classes in the 2015/16 school year, which means there are now over 1,000 special classes attached to mainstream schools catering for children with special educational needs.

There is an extra 480 Resource Teachers in our schools in the current school year which takes into account increased demand and demographic growth and ensures that children continue to have access to additional supports in school.

The National Council for Special Education (NCSE) has a statutory role under the Education of Persons with Special Educational Needs Act to provide me with policy advice in relation to matters concerning the education of persons with special educational needs.

The NCSE published policy advice in 2013 which identified that the current model for allocating resource teachers to schools is potentially inequitable and recommended the development of a new allocation model.

In developing its policy advice the NCSE consulted widely with education partners, representatives from the school sector, parents, and disability representative bodies.

The NCSE recommended that a new model be developed based on the profiled needs of each school, including consideration of Standardised Test performances in schools, and a school's social context, rather than primarily on school size and the diagnosed disability of individual children. It is intended that this new model will reduce the inequities in the current system, and also ensure that we are not unnecessarily labelling children from a young age in order to access resources.

Although there was widespread support for the implementation of the new model, there was not time to address all of the issues in relation to the proposed new model in time to allow for it to be implemented this year. A pilot of the new model, which is currently underway in 47 schools, will run for the duration of the current school year. This pilot has been developed in order to test the model in a number of schools and to allow for the practical effect of the application of the new model in pilot schools to be gauged. It will also allow us to take into account the learning experiences of schools, principals, pupils and the views of parents over the course of the pilot, prior to the full implementation of the proposed new allocation model.