Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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451. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the extent to which the special needs teacher requirement continues to be met nationally and, in particular, in north County Kildare; if sufficient provision continues to be made in line with requirements and requests from the various primary and second level schools; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [40472/20]

Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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Very significant levels of financial provision are made to ensure that all children with special educational needs can be provided with an education appropriate to their needs.

Next year my Department will spend approximately €2 Billion, or almost 20% of its total budget, on making additional provision for children with special educational needs.

This represents an increase of over 50% in total expenditure since 2011, at which point €1.247 Billion per annum was provided.

This additional investment has provided for an increase of 39% in the number of special education teachers allocated to schools, from 9,740 in 2011, to over 13,550 at present.

The Deputy will be aware that a new model for allocating special education teachers to mainstream schools was introduced from September 2017. The new model represents a needs based model and a diagnosis of a disability is not required in order to access additional teaching support.

The Special Education Teacher allocation is determined on the basis of an education profile of the schools incorporating data on enrolments, number of children with complex needs, gender profile, results from student standardised scores and some account of the social context of the school.

Under the special education teacher allocation model, schools are frontloaded with resources, to provide supports immediately to those pupils who need it without delay.

This means that children who need support can have that support provided immediately rather than having to wait for a diagnosis.

It also means that under the new allocation model, children do not have to be labelled with a particular condition to qualify for extra teaching assistance.

Allocations for schools were updated with effect from September 2019, in accordance with the criteria set out in DES Circulars 0013 and 0014 2019.

A process is also in place to provide additional allocations to schools 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 may also seek a review of their allocation of special education teaching support from the NCSE where the school considers that exceptional circumstances have arisen in their schools to the extent that they cannot provide for the special education teaching needs of all of the pupils in the school.

The additional investment in provision for special education teachers, combined with reform of the mechanism for allocating special education teachers to schools, based on the profiled needs of schools, means that special needs teacher requirement can continue to be met nationally, including for schools in north County Kildare.