Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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318. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason a school (details supplied) has not been allocated enough SNA teacher hours to meet the demand within the school. [19422/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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Special Needs Assistant (SNA) support is provided specifically to assist recognised primary, post primary and special schools to cater for the care needs of pupils with disabilities in an educational context, where the nature of these care needs have been outlined in professional reports as being so significant that a pupil will require adult assistance in order to be able to attend school and to participate in education.

SNAs are not allocated to individual pupils but to schools, as a school based resource. The National Council for Special Education (NCSE), which is a separate statutory agency, allocates a quantum of SNA support for each school annually, taking into account the care needs of all of the qualifying children enrolled in the school, and on the basis of the assessed care needs of all of the children concerned, rather than solely by reference to a pupils disability categorisation.

SNAs do not have a pedagogical role and it would not be appropriate for pupils with special educational needs to be taught by SNAs.  The classroom teacher is responsible for educating all pupils in his/her class, including any pupil with a special educational need.  Additional teaching resources are also allocated to mainstream schools to support pupils with special educational needs.

The NCSE have up to and including the current school year, also allocated Low Incidence Teaching Hours (LITH) to schools to support children who have an identified special educational need within the low incidence, or more complex, category of special need, as defined by my Department's Circular Sp Ed 02/05, to which the Deputy refers. 

The new model for allocating special education teachers to schools which has been introduced for the 2017/18 school year, replaces teaching resources allocated under the Low Incidence Teaching Hours and the General Allocation Model for primary schools. The new model provides a single unified allocation of special educational teaching support to schools.  Allocations based on the school profiles issued to all schools on 7th March, details have also been published on the NCSE website.  My Department’s Circular 0013/2017 for primary schools sets out the details of the new model for allocating special education teachers to schools.

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

The new model will give greater autonomy to schools to allocate resources to the pupils who most need these resources, regardless of their diagnosis. 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.

In circumstances where a parent is dissatisfied as to the extent of additional support teaching time which has been allocated to their child from within a schools allocation, the normal course of action open to a parent would be to raise this matter with the school Principal in the first instance, and to request that additional teaching be provided to their child.

 In the event that a parent raised an issue in relation to the allocation of additional support for their child with the school Principal, and remains dissatisfied with the manner in which the school Principal addressed their complaint, the next course of action open to the parent would be to raise this matter directly with the Board of Management of the School, who are the body which has responsibility for the management of the school.