Written answers

Wednesday, 20 July 2016

Department of Education and Skills

Special Educational Needs Data

Photo of Thomas ByrneThomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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156. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to provide a breakdown of the resource teaching and learning support hours allocated to all schools in each electoral division or the next smallest administrative area unit available in Dublin. [23193/16]

Photo of Richard BrutonRichard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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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.

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.

The NCSE has published details of Resource Teaching Hours for all schools including Dublin on its website, which are available to view on a per county basis at: .

With regard to Learning Support Hours, since September 2012 at primary level the combined resources available for learning support (General Allocation Model) and language support (EAL) 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. Appendix C of Circular 0007/2016 lists the GAM/EAL allocation for all schools and is available on the Department website at: .

Each recognised post primary school in the free education scheme or block grant scheme with an enrolment of less than 600 recognised pupils (excluding pupils on PLC Programmes) receives an allocation of 0.9 of a post. Recognised schools with an enrolment of 600 such pupils or more receive an allocation of 1.4 whole time equivalent posts. Details can be obtained from Circular 0003/2016 which can be downloaded at: .

178 learning support teaching posts were allocated in post primary schools in Dublin for high incidence special educational needs.

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