Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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210. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of resource teachers who will be allocated in advance of the roll-out of the new model of resource allocation in 2017; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14573/16]

Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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212. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if all applications for resource teaching hours have been processed; if the number of posts available will be sufficient to meet demand; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14575/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 210 and 212 together.

I wish to advise the Deputy that spending on provision for children with Special Educational Needs has been prioritised in recent years, despite the enormous pressures on all public spending.

Funding for special education provision in 2016 will amount to some €1.4 billion, which is equivalent to approximately 17% of the gross overall current allocation for education and training. It has increased by 10% in the past two years.

This funding provides for a range of supports and services, including additional learning and resource teaching support.

There are currently over 11,800 Learning Support and Resource Teacher posts in mainstream primary and post primary schools, providing additional teaching support to pupils with special educational needs.

The National Council for Special Education (NCSE) has allocated 6,832 Resource Teaching posts to mainstream schools this year, which is an increase of 29% over the numbers allocated since 2011, which was 5265 posts.

A total of 7452 resource teaching posts is available to the NCSE to allocate to schools for the coming 2016/17 school year, which is an increase of over 600 posts on the current years allocation, and an increase of 41% over the numbers allocated since 2011, which was 5265 posts.

The NCSE invited all schools to make applications for resource teaching support, for the 2016/17 school year, by 29th February. The NCSE advised all schools, on 28th April, 2016, of their allocations for resource teaching support for September 2016.

7015 posts were allocated to schools at that time Details of these allocations are available at www.ncse.ie. The remainder of the 7452 available are available for allocation by the NCSE to meet demand from further valid applications which may be received to September 2016. It is expected that the remaining posts will be sufficient to meet this demand.

As the allocation process for 2016/17 is ongoing, it is not possible at this point to state how many resource teachers will be allocated in advance of the roll out of the proposed new allocation model.

The Deputy will be aware that a pilot of the model has been taking place across a number of schools in advance of implementation in the school system generally.

The pilot has been developed in order to test the model and to allow for the practical effect of the application of the new model in the 47 pilot schools to be evaluated.

A review of the pilot has now commenced. This review will allow us to take into account the learning experiences of schools, principals, pupils and the views of parents over the course of the pilot.

On conclusion of the review a decision will be taken on the time frame for the full implementation of the proposed new allocation model.