Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 24 Feb 2000

Vol. 515 No. 2

Adjournment Debate. - Remedial Teachers.

Mr. Farrelly

The Minister's predecessor made a number of decisions about remedial teachers across the country. He informed all principals that every school would have a remedial teacher. It so happened that by spreading the availability of teachers to schools it meant there was a reduction in the availability of such teachers for children who required remedial teaching, and Beaufort College in Navan, is not any different. It is a second level school run in conjunction with the VEC in Navan, and has just under 600 pupils. I am informed by the secretary of the parents' council at the college that the decision by the former Minister has led to a reduction in the availability of teaching hours for children who require remedial teaching.

This is wrong and it is an exercise by Government in playing around with figures at the expense of school children, not only at Beaufort College but also in other schools around the country. There are now insufficient hours available for remedial teaching in schools such as Beaufort College. How does the Minister intend to rectify this problem?

A few months ago I had the opportunity of raising this issue in the House in relation to primary school remedial teachers. Some of those remedial teachers had been covering four schools but their services were then extended so that they were covering six schools in part of the northern end of County Meath. Teachers are now spending half the time in their cars travelling from one school to another at the expense of children they are supposed to be teaching.

A radical change of policy is needed by the Department. The Minister should take the initiative and rectify the problem. In his reply, I would like to hear the Minister stating that his priority is to ensure that every child needing remedial teaching – and not just in Navan – will be able to spend more time with such teachers rather than less. The result of the previous Minister's decision to provide remedial teaching all over the country was to take such teaching away from children who already had it. There is no point in pretending to parents of schoolchildren that there is a remedial teaching service in every school while in essence only a marginal service is available in schools such as Beaufort College in Navan. I ask the Minister to deal with this as a new initiative in his new brief. I ask him to solve this problem by providing extra teachers and to ensuring that pupils who require a remedial teaching service will have longer hours of remedial teaching. This is the least we can do to with the funds that are available due to the Celtic tiger. We should ensure that children have a proper remedial teaching service. Reports on the numbers of children leaving school without a proper education indicate that the lack of remedial teaching is a contributory factor. I ask the Minister to make this a priority.

Minister for Education and Science (Dr. Woods)

I am glad that the Deputy has raised this matter as it affords me the opportunity to advise the House of the position with regard to the provisions remedial teaching in primary and second level schools.

As has been indicated in the past, remedial education at primary level is a matter in the first instance for the ordinary class teachers. Fully qualified primary teachers are trained to cope with a variety of reading problems, including those that are accompanied by perceptual difficulties. The class teacher is ideally placed to provide the first line of assistance and support to pupils with special needs. The majority of pupils with remedial needs would therefore be helped within the scope of the normal teaching service.

However it is acknowledged that remedial teachers constitute the main additional resource for addressing the problem of under-achieving in primary schools. Remedial teachers are a particularly important resource in catering for children with less serious learning difficulties, such as literacy and/or numeracy problems, by directly teaching individuals or small groups on a withdrawal basis.

Where individual pupils are concerned, it is important that the educational response takes a variety of forms and should be tailored to meet the needs of the individual pupil. Many children with less serious difficulties are fully capable of having their needs met in ordinary schools on a fully integrated basis, with the help where necessary of a remedial teacher. In other cases the support of a special resource teacher may be a more appropriate response. Alternatively, where a child's needs are more serious, the most appropriate solution may involve placement in a special class attached to an ordinary school or placement in a special school dedicated to particular disabilities.

The Deputy will be aware that a major expansion of the remedial teaching service in first and second level schools came into effect at the commencement of the current school year. The priority was to ensure that all schools without a service would have access to one with effect from September 1999. The position at second level is that, since the beginning of the current school year, all second level schools in the free education scheme have an entitlement to a teacher allocation on an ex-quota basis in respect of remedial teaching. The allocation to individual schools for a particular school year is determined by the enrolment in the school at the end of the preceding September. Schools with an enrolment of 600 or more pupils are allocated a full post while schools with enrolments under 600 are allocated half a post in respect of remedial teaching.

The position regarding the specific school referred to by the Deputy is that this school is one of the schools within the County Meath Vocational Education Committee. In the vocational sector teacher allocation is generally done on a VEC scheme basis rather than on an individual school basis. It is a matter for the chief executive officer with the agreement of the committee to allocate teaching resources to the individual schools in the scheme from within the overall approved allocation for the scheme. In the case of the County Meath VEC the teacher allocation for the current school year includes an ex-quota allocation of six wholetime teacher equivalents in respect of remedial teaching. This is an increase of two wholetime teacher equivalents over that allocated in respect of remedial teaching in the previous school year.

As already stated, it is a matter for the chief executive officer to allocate resources to individual schools. I understand that in the case of the school referred to by the Deputy the remedial allocation for the current school year was based on the entitlement as determined by the enrolment. Regarding the next school year, it will be a matter for the chief executive officer, with the agreement of the VEC, to decide on the allocation to be made having regard to the overall teacher allocation for the scheme. In the current school year, the total ex-quota allocation to second level schools in respect of remedial teaching is of the order of 560 wholetime teacher equivalents, which represents an increase of the order of 210 wholetime teacher equivalents as compared to the previous year.

The details I have outlined clearly demonstrate that significant expansion has taken place in the provision for remedial teaching in schools since this Government came into office. I assure the Deputy that the question of further improving the provision will be kept under review.

The Dáil adjourned at 5.25 p.m. until 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 29 February 2000.