Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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344. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills his plans to review SNA hours in a school (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36145/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The Special Needs Assistant (SNA) scheme provides schools with additional adult support staff to assist children with special educational needs who have significant additional care needs, in an educational context, in recognised primary and post primary schools.  The criteria by which SNA support is allocated to pupils is set out in my Department’s Circular 0030/2014, which is available at w.education.ie.

I recently announced that an additional 975 SNA posts will be available for allocation to schools from September 2017 which is a 7.5% increase to meet the demands for the new school year.  A total of 13,990 SNA posts will now be available at a gross annual cost of €458 million.  This is more SNAs than we have ever had previously and will ensure that all children who qualify for SNA support can continue to receive access to such support.  In total, the number of SNAs available has increased by over 32% since 2011, when 10,575 posts were available.

The National Council for Special Education (NCSE), which is an independent statutory agency, is responsible, through its network of Special Educational Needs Organisers (SENOs), for processing applications from schools for SNA support.  Responsibility for deciding on the quantum of educational supports and resources to be allocated to schools to support individual pupils rests with the NCSE.  In making allocations to schools, the NCSE takes into account the assessed individual needs of all children with identified needs in the school.

The NCSE has advised all schools of their allocations for SNA support for the coming 2017/18 school year, including the school in question.  Details of SNA allocations which have been made to schools, have been published by the NCSE on their website at .

Where a school wishes to make an application for SNA support in respect of a child who was not considered as part of this allocation process they may continue to make such applications to the NCSE.

It should be noted that SNA allocations are not made to individual children, but are made to schools to support the care needs of children with assessed special educational needs in the school. 

In circumstances where a school, or parent, is unhappy with the allocation of SNA support which has been made, or if it is considered that the level of support allocated is not sufficient to meet the care needs of the pupils concerned, the school or parent, may appeal the decision via the NCSE appeals process.  Details of the NCSE appeals process are available at www.ncse.ie.

DES Circular 0013/2017 for primary schools and 0014/2017 for post primary schools were published on 7 March 2017. These Circulars set out the details of the new model for allocating special education teachers to schools.

The revised allocation model replaces the generalised allocation process at primary and post primary school level for learning support and high incidence special educational needs, and the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) allocation process which provided additional resource teaching supports to schools, to support pupils assessed as having Low Incidence disabilities.

The new model provides one single allocation to schools based on the profile. Schools will be frontloaded with resources to provide additional teaching support to all pupils who need such support. 

The NCSE notified all schools of their special education teaching allocations for September 2017 on 7 March 2017.

The NCSE also published details of the appeals process on the NCSE website: www.ncse.ie. Schools who wished to submit an appeal were asked to do so by 31 March 2017.

In relation to the particular school referred to by the Deputy, under the old allocation model, this school had a Learning Support allocation of 40 hours for the 2016/17 school year, which combined with 13.60 resource teaching hours allocated to the school by the National Council for Special Education, gave a total allocation to the school of 53.60 additional teaching hours for the 2016/17 school year.

The profiled allocation for the school, including the additional baseline provision, for 2017/18 amounts to 47.50 hours in total. However, the school has maintained its existing level of allocation of 53.60 hours which includes a retained amount of 6.10 and a baseline amount of 16.73 hours. Accordingly, the school has been allocated some 22.83 hours more than its profile indicates.

Schools could appeal whether the data used to calculate their school profile was correct and complete and whether it was correctly applied in the calculation of their 2017/18 allocation.

DES Circulars 0013/2017 and 0014/2017 outline the basis on which the Education Research Centre determined the allocations for all schools.

In advance of any submission of an appeal, schools were asked to read carefully the DES Circulars and in particular the relevant sections, which relate to the breakdown of the allocation, which may be under consideration for appeal.

The NCSE is now concluding the appeal process and it is hoped that decisions will issue to schools in the coming days.

The model will also allow for some additional provision for exceptional circumstances or where a school’s enrolment levels increase very substantially prior to the next review of the model.

It is acknowledged that there are circumstances which may arise in schools, which fall outside the appeals process put in place by the NCSE in March 2017(NCSE 03/2017) to support the new special education teaching model. This includes circumstances where the school profile significantly changes following the allocation process e.g. a developing school where the net enrolment numbers significantly increase year on year.

Schools have recently been advised of the qualifying criteria for such allocations. Schools who qualify for additional allocations on the grounds that they will receive additional developing posts in accordance with the primary and post primary staffing schedules for 2017, will also provisionally receive additional special education teaching allocations, less any retained element contained within their profiled allocation.

Schools which have qualified for additional allocations on the grounds of developing status will be notified of these allocations.

The National Council for Special Education will support schools in managing their special education teaching allocations in the first instance. Only in very exceptional circumstances, where it can be demonstrated that the schools profile has changed very significantly since the allocation was made to the school, may an additional allocation of hours be made to the school.

Guidelines for schools on the organisation, deployment and use of their special education teachers to address the need of pupils with special educational needs have also now been published and are available on my Departments website.

The Guidelines will support schools to reflect on how they can review and manage their timetabling practices to ensure the timetable is sufficiently flexible to meet the needs of all pupils in their school who have special needs. The Guidelines encourage schools to ensure they deploy their resources appropriately to meet the needs of all of the children in their school who require additional teaching support, including pupils with emerging needs, or new entrants.