Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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212. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the evidence his Department or a body under its aegis has to support the claim made by the NCSE that the current allocation model for resource teaching and learning supports is driving an over-diagnosis and over-labelling of children as having behavioural conditions, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD, or developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder, ASD . [8504/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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On 18th January last, I announced that a new model for allocating Special Education Teaching Resources to mainstream primary and post primary schools will be introduced from September 2017.

The basic aim of this new model is to deliver better outcomes for children with special educational needs. Large amounts of research, analysis, consultation with service users and stakeholders, and piloting have gone in to the development of this model and all the evidence points to the fact that this new system will deliver better outcomes for children.

No school will lose supports as a result of the implementation of the new model. In addition, no school will receive an allocation, for the support of pupils with complex needs, less than the allocation they received to support such pupils during the 2016/17 school year. No allocation made for such pupils by the NCSE will be removed from schools as long as that pupil remains in the school.

I also announced that an additional 900 teaching posts will be provided to support the introduction of this new allocation model. The provision of an additional 900 teaching posts is a very significant investment in the provision of additional teaching support for pupils with special educational needs in our schools. This is additional to an increase of 41% in the number of resource teachers allocated to schools annually by the NCSE since 2011, when 5265 teachers were allocated, as opposed to provision for 7452 posts in the current school year.

The additional funding will provide additional supports to over 1000 schools who are identified as needing additional supports as a result of the new model. Supports for children with special educational needs is a huge priority for this Government. We currently spend €1.5billion, or one fifth of the total education budget, on supports for children with special educational needs.

The Deputy will be aware that the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) has a statutory role under Section 20 of the Education of Persons with Special Educational Needs (EPSEN) Act 2004 to advise me, as Minister for Education and Skills, in relation to matters relating to the education of children and others with disabilities.

In 2014 the NCSE published a Working Group Report “Delivery for Students with Special Educational Needs – a better and more equitable way” which recommended a new model for allocating resource teaching support to schools, based on the profiled needs of each school, rather than being primarily based on the diagnosed disability of individual children. A copy of this report is available on the website www.ncse.ie.

This report found that some children are being diagnosed as having a special educational need for resource allocation purposes, rather than such a diagnosis being required for health or medical reasons.

The report drew on evidence from national and international research which concluded that assessment undertaken purely for diagnosis to satisfy criteria for the allocation of resources may result in the unnecessary or premature labelling of chil­dren with a disability, and may not always be in a child’s best interest.

It noted that there are a number of shortcomings to the diagnostic model of categorisation. These include: lower expectation, stigma, issues around reliability and validity of diagnostic categories, over identification of students from certain minority and socio-economic groups, tendency to be input focused with little attention given to outcomes. The literature suggests that the diagnostic model itself has many shortcomings as a way of identifying students for additional resources.

The NCSE recommended the development of a new model for the allocation of additional resource teaching supports for schools, based on the profiled needs of schools, as opposed to being based primarily on assessments of special educational needs for individual children attending the school.

On 18th January last, I announced that a new model for allocating Special Education Teaching Resources to mainstream primary and post primary schools will be introduced from September 2017. 

The new allocation model is intended to ensure that schools can be resourced to provide support to all students who need additional help – whether the student has a professional assessment or is on a waiting list for a professional assessment.

Schools will be frontloaded with resources, based on each school's profile, to provide supports immediately to those pupils who need it without delay.  This will reduce the administrative burden on schools as schools will no longer have to complete an application process annually and apply for newly enrolled pupils who require resource hours.

Children who need support can have that support provided immediately rather than having to wait for a diagnosis. A child may receive additional teaching support under the new allocation model if the school, using its school based assessment and the NEPS Continuum of Support, identifies that the child has learning needs