Written Answers. - Special Educational Needs.
Frances Fitzgerald
Question:
42
Ms Fitzgerald
asked the
Minister for Education and Science
the proposals, if any, he has to address the weaknesses in the delivery of remedial education at primary level identified by the Education Research Centre's recent report.
[8172/99]
Monica Barnes
Question:
52
Mrs. Barnes
asked the
Minister for Education and Science
the steps, if any, he will take to deal with the failure of remedial education to increase the average position of pupils in disadvantaged schools receiving this intervention.
[8179/99]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 42 and 52 together.
A number of steps are being taken to address the weaknesses identified in the delivery of remedial education at primary level revealed in the recent report Study of Remedial Education in Irish Primary Schools.
The summary report of the study has been issued to all schools. Principals have been requested to convene a meeting with their remedial teachers, staffs and boards of management to discuss the content of the report and the steps they should take at school level to implement the recommendations.
The summary report has also been given to the directors of all of the courses in remedial edu cation organised for remedial teachers. In this way the findings and recommendations of the report will become part of the training of remedial teachers and there will be an immediate application of them.
As part of the 1998 budget package to tackle educational disadvantage, I announced that the remedial teaching service will be extended to every primary school in the country from next September. This will mean that for the first time all pupils who need special help will have access to a remedial teacher.
It is also my intention to act on the recommendation to have the Guidelines on Remedial Education revised as soon as possible. This should ensure that there is clarity about the aims of remedial education and about the population of pupils for whom it is intended. Innovations in best practice will be incorporated in this revision.
Particular attention will be focused in the revised guidelines on the needs of schools in designated areas of educational disadvantage. They will include advice on the approaches used in the Success for All programme, which is a school-wide restructuring programme designed specifically for schools with large numbers of disadvantaged pupils. The main features of this approach are: regrouping of pupils for instruction based on their reading performance for up to 90 minutes per day with pupils in a group sometimes drawn from more than one class level; provision of individual tutoring where needed; co-operative learning of comprehension skills in the upper classes; and regular assessment to monitor the effects of tutoring.
I have also decided to allocate significant funding to assist school development planning in these schools. An important focus of this planning will be to address the needs of pupils with serious literacy and other learning difficulties.
The general improvements recently announced in the staffing of primary schools, and the introduction of the revised curriculum in English which will have a major emphasis on the development of literacy skill, coupled with the £6.5 million allocated to schools, with larger grants to the schools in the disadvantaged areas scheme, for the purchase of library works will be of major benefit in raising reading standards.
In addition, I will shortly announce a range of national reading initiatives for later this year. The aim of the initiatives will be to increase reading standards and to reduce the number of students who leave school with poor literacy.
