Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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180. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason a school (details supplied) has had its resource teaching hours decreased in circumstances in which it had no opportunity to appeal the decrease in hours in view of the fact the change came outside the appeals window; and if he will address other issues with regard to its allocation. [25519/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I wish to advise the Deputy that my Departments Circular DES 0013/2017 set out details of a new model for allocating Special Education Teachers to mainstream schools. 

Following publication of this Circular on 7 March, all schools received a letter from the National Council for Special Education which set out details of the allocation which is being made to schools under the new allocation model from September 2017.

In April my Department became aware that a school had inadvertently incorrectly completed the Primary School Profile Questionnaire and had as a consequence received too high of an allocation for the social context element of this school profile.

In completing the primary school social context survey, whereby schools were asked to indicate the disadvantage levels in their schools, schools with an enrolment of 160 or more pupils were asked to base their responses to section 3 of the survey, which covered various aspects of disadvantage, on the number of pupils in a single grade level (specifically 2nd class, or if there was no 2nd class, the next most senior grade level) in their schools.

The intention of using different denominators was to reduce the workload on principals completing the survey. A value was then proportionally applied to the school.

The school had based responses to Section 3 on the entire school, as opposed to 2nd Class only.

The Educational Research Centre (ERC) was asked to review this matter and advised that having reviewed the data, the effect was that the social context/disadvantage allocation for the school had been greatly inflated due to the fact that the incorrect denominator was used by the school to report numbers based on the whole school. 

Whereas this problem was not identified during the data checking process prior to the model being finalised, without being aware of the circumstances pertaining to individual schools, it would have been impossible for data checking to identify such a problem. 

Having reviewed the circumstances of the school which had come to the attention of the Department, the ERC also reviewed the position of social context allocations for other schools who had received very high social context allocations in their profiles.

The quality assurance technical check revealed that an over allocation of resources had been made for seventeen schools which had also used the incorrect denominator, including the school referred to in the Deputy’s question. 

The ERC recalculated the profiles for all of these schools, based on the correct proportionate application of the survey data, and new allocation letters issued to all of the effected schools at the earliest possible opportunity, in May 2017.

In relation to the school referred to by the Deputy, this school has received an allocation of 93.13 hours for September 2017, which is a very significant allocation for a school of this size.

The school profile, when revised to correct for the error, indicated that the allocation which would be required for this school should be 82.50 hours, based on the school profile. 

However, as all schools will receive an allocation at least equivalent to the allocation they received in the 2016/17 school year this school has been allocated 93.13 hours.

My Department must treat all schools equally in relation to the allocation process and where incorrect data was supplied by the school and used in the allocation it was incumbent on my Department to correct this matter. However, it is important to point out that the amendments arose as a result of incorrect information supplied by the school.

Whereas the date for submission of an appeal to the NCSE has closed, should the school wish to seek a review of this allocation decision, they should write to my Department regarding this matter.