Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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The details of the 2024 Summer Programme will be announced shortly. As in previous years, the main priority for the 2024 Summer Programme will be to ensure children and young people with the most complex needs should have access to a school-based programme.

In 2023, the role of National Co-ordinator was established with a particular focus on increasing the participation of special schools. Consequently, more than 50% of special schools participated in the 2023 Summer Programme than in 2022. I am pleased to advise that the National Co-ordinator will continue on in their role again in 2024 and will continue to liaise solely with Special Schools in order to facilitate them in running a Summer Programme.

Even so, I can advise that every school who participates in the Summer Programme will be able to appoint a dedicated person to the role of Summer Programme Organiser. This role was introduced last year for the purpose of designing a scheme that best fitted the needs and requirements of the pupils participating in the 2023 Summer Programme. As the Organiser is already a fixed term teacher in the school, they would be cognisant of each child’s needs and are able to ensure that staff employed on the programme are aware of appropriate information so that they can support participation. The Organiser can also be utilised where schools are using external staff by establishing procedures to facilitate the sharing of relevant pupil information, appropriate planning documentation and details of school policies and procedures to new staff or to staff who are unfamiliar with the pupils. Other duties include:

• The Organiser working collaboratively with school personnel to identify the pupils who should participate on the school based programme and communicate with their parents/guardian.
• Developing the school’s summer programme and activities in line with this year’s theme.

The main premise of the role of Organiser is therefore to support schools, pupils and staff in running a school-based programme.

Details of this year’s Summer Programme, including details on guidance and training material, will be issued to schools directly and will be published on www.gov.ie/summerprogramme.

Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I want to thank the Deputy for raising this issue and for giving me the opportunity to clarify some of the concerns that have been raised regarding the Special Education Teacher Allocations for mainstream schools which issued on the 6th February.

At the outset, I would like to clarify Complex needs have not been removed – the data which was used since 2017 from the CDNT and which is no longer routinely available is being replaced by high quality, verifiable education data.

To ensure that schools are not negatively impacted all existing hours assigned for complex needs are being maintained for each school.

The allocation model for 2024/25 distributes the total available number of SET posts in line with each school’s profile of need. It seeks to distribute teaching resources in the fairest possible manner, taking into account quality, robust evidence in respect of individual schools. This ensures that resources are in the right place at the right time to meet the needs of children in mainstream.

There will more Special Education Teachers in our schools in September 2024 than ever before – an increase of 1,000 from 2020/21 school year. This is in addition to a significant reduction in class teachers sizes at primary level over three budgets to where our PTR at primary level is now 23:1. This means, more than ever, children with SEN in our mainstream schools are best supported to meet their needs. In addition the model will now be run annually in line with general teacher allocations. This allows schools to better plan their staffing structures and gives them time to arrange clusters in areas where schools share an SET teacher.

There has been a limited change to the method used to allocate SET to mainstream classes. This review involved extensive consultation and visits to schools by the NCSE to look at the strengths and shortcomings of the allocation model. The feedback has been incorporated into the revised model for 2024/25.

The review of the SET model focused on ensuring that we had the best possible data available to inform the distribution of resources to our schools. Our policy relating to supporting all of our children in our schools based on their level of need remains.

The policy that individual schools are required to adhere to is the principle that the allocation is utilised to ensure that those pupils with the greatest level of need receive the greatest level of support and this remains unchanged.

Therefore the profiles are directly correlated to, and focused on, pupils with the greatest level of need in the areas of literacy and numeracy.

Finally I would like to confirm that there will be no change to the eligible criteria for children with complex needs accessing the summer programme.