I do not have time, Deputy. Remedial teachers work with the weakest and provide these pupils with extra teaching support.
I will shortly publish revised guidelines on learning support. These guidelines are a direct response to the recommendations of a study on remedial education commissioned by my Department and carried out by the Education Research Centre. They have been drawn up following extensive consultation with representatives of parents, school management and teachers. They are at the cutting edge and embrace all that is best in remedial teaching.
The new guidelines will ensure that the objective of learning support will be more clearly identified. They will set the role of the teacher firmly in the context of a whole-school approach, with emphasis on the complementary roles and shared responsibilities of the class teacher and the learning support teacher.
Training for serving remedial teachers is being provided on postgraduate diploma courses in selected colleges of education and universities. This intensive training enables the remedial teachers to identify children with learning difficulties in both reading and mathematics, to diagnose the exact nature of those difficulties and to provide remedial tuition.
In addition, my Department financially supports many shorter courses for teachers in the remedial and special education areas. These are provided mainly through the network of education centres, teachers' associations and an extensive programme of summer courses for primary school teachers. The new guidelines will be underpinned by specific training for teachers.
As Minister for Education and Science, I would be seriously concerned that any parent of a special needs child should feel that the needs of his or her child are not being adequately addressed. Since taking office, this Government has undertaken an unprecedented level of development in special education services. Arising from a Government decision in October 1998, all children with special needs within the primary system now have an automatic entitlement to a response to their needs, irrespective of their disability or location. The response may take the form of resource teacher support, child care support or both, depending on the needs involved.
Already, as a result of this development, the number of resource teachers in the primary system has been increased from 104 in October 1998 to 450 at present. The number of special needs assistants helping children with special needs has been increased from 299 to 1,095 in the same per iod. I will continue to allocate further resources in response to need.
In addition, the special pupil teacher ratios applied to all special schools and special classes catering for children with special needs have been reduced to the level recommended by the Special Education Review Committee.
My Department is encountering significant difficulties in securing speech therapy services from the health boards to support special schools and special classes catering for children with speech and language difficulties. My colleague, the Minister for Health and Children, is aware of this difficulty and is seeking to address it.
As an interim measure in response to the shortages of professionals in these disciplines, and pending the outcome of the work of a task force, arrangements are being made to increase the number of places available for the coming academic year. The Higher Education Authority will also explore the possible use of postgraduate conversion courses.
The Government established a National Educational Psychological Service Agency with effect from 1 September 1999. This service is being developed on a phased basis over five years. Our objective is to ensure that all schools will have access to the service by the end of 2004. As part of this process, I have increased the number of psychologists in the service from 43 to almost 100 with effect from September 2000.
While these developments constitute a major advance in the quality of our special education services, I fully recognise that much more remains to be done. Where the parents of children with special needs are concerned, I am anxious that the system be made more responsive and supportive.
In this connection, I have asked a planning group within my Department to review our current approach to special education services. I have also asked the group to make recommendations on the arrangements which should be put in place to ensure the most effective provision of a high quality co-ordinated service for students with special needs. I expect to receive the report of the planning group in the near future and I assure the House that I will respond positively to any proposals which will support children with special needs and their parents.
We must be happy that the resources which we are putting into this area are raising standards and targeting those pupils most in need of assistance. All primary classes from first to sixth will be supplied with standardised, norm-referenced tests of literacy for use by their pupils. Teachers are also being provided with profiles of pupil achievement in English – the Drumcondra English Profiles – to complement the standardised tests.
The use of this combination of tests will assist class teachers in effectively monitoring the progress of their pupils and in identifying, at an early stage, those who may be experiencing reading difficulties. Such monitoring and early detection will result in earlier intervention and reduce the numbers of those with serious difficulties. I intend also to put in place a programme of national surveys of English reading at primary level. These will be done on a regular basis in conjunction with the Education Research Centre.
The national reading initiative was launched on 21 January and is a genuine effort to tackle the problem of poor reading in the population generally and to promote reading. The initiative acknowledges that the problem of low achievement and under-achievement is not just a school-based problem. It stresses the importance of parents encouraging their children to read by reading to them and by listening to their children reading.
The initiative is pursuing the twin objectives of raising public awareness of the importance of developing reading skills and helping to maximise the literacy support services that are already available. It is a community-wide initiative, collaborating with schools, libraries and voluntary community groups to target people who cannot read at all, people who cannot read very well and want to improve, people who can read but do not and people who read a good deal.
The initiative is running a number of national events and is also providing support for organisations that are engaging in activities designed to promote literacy development. The events proposed for the year cover a wide geographical spread and include people of all abilities and ages.
To focus our work in the area of reading, I am appointing a national director for literacy and a project team to get the maximum benefit from the steps we are taking. I will shortly outline the details of these plans and I expect the advertisements to fill these positions to appear in the national press in a matter of weeks.
The House will be aware that an international adult literacy survey of 12 countries conducted in 1995 and published in 1997 provided a profile of literacy skills of adults ages 16 to 64. The survey found that Ireland scored badly in the overall literacy tasks and indicated a serious problem in functional literacy among Irish adults. It showed that early school leavers, older adults and unemployed people were most at risk of literacy difficulties, with participation in adult education and training being least likely for those with the poorest skills.
The response of this Government has been quick and comprehensive. The provision in the education sector for adult literacy increased substantially from a base of £850,000 in 1997, when the Government took office, to £7.825 million in 2000. The national development plan provides for an investment of £73.8 million in the coming years in adult literacy, which will be supplemented by a £1 billion investment under a back to education initiative providing for an expansion of part-time Youthreach, PLC and VTOs options. This will become an important bridge from literacy tuition to certified learning points.
Recent Government initiatives in the area of adult literacy will be covered by my colleague, the Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, Deputy O'Dea, later in the debate. It is clear, however, that the Government has put considerable investment into the area.
A White Paper on adult education and lifelong learning is in the final stages of preparation and will be published very soon. It will deal in a comprehensive way with the Government's strategy on adult education, including adult literacy. It will deal also with the national and regional structures to be put in place to support adult education in Ireland.
As Minister, I am conscious that we must make our education system more responsive to and inclusive of individuals who are less advantaged, those who have special needs or who left the system in previous years without having access to the range of opportunities available today. They deserve a second chance.
To tackle disadvantage effectively, an all-encompassing strategy is needed. We need to intervene early, we must raise awareness of the benefits of early childhood education, we must assist parents in helping their children to learn and develop and we must raise standards in provision, giving priority to those most in need of assistance.
As Deputies will be aware, currently, at primary level, financial and staffing supports are allocated to those schools deemed to serve children associated with educational disadvantage and early school leaving. These designated schools receive enhanced capitation grants and many are allocated concessionary or ex-quota staffing. The ongoing expansion of the home-school-community liaison scheme promotes co-operation between parents and teachers in support of young people's learning. The Early Start pre-school project supports the transition from the home to school life of three to four year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds. These programmes are effective.
Schools in the urban and rural dimensions of Breaking the Cycle receive grants for books, teaching and learning materials and local initiatives and benefit from a range of other supports. Teachers deployed in the "Support Teacher" project assist children with disruptive, disturbed and withdrawn behaviours and help schools staffs in the formulation of policy.
Primary and second level schools are involved in the eight to 15 early school leaver initiative introduced by the Government in September 1998. The current projects will end on 30 June next and an evaluation report on their operation will be available in September. However, I am convinced of the usefulness of these projects and have decided to provide the resources for a new phase of the projects in the initiative from 1 July 2000 until 31 August 2002. The services of the projects' co-ordinator will also be retained for that period.
Certain second level schools are also designated by my Department as serving young people from areas of disadvantage. These schools now receive enhanced capitation grants, they are allocated concessionary ex-quota staffing – a ‘disadvantaged' post – and they receive support to make possible the full-time allocation of a teacher on home-school-community liaison duties.
I am engaged in preparing a multi-sectoral three-year programme that will assign a massive £193 million to the support of people at risk of or who are actually experiencing educational disadvantage. The funding will be assigned at pre-school level, at primary, post-primary and third levels and in the area of lifelong and continuing education.
At primary level, I have commissioned a survey of all primary schools by the Educational Research Centre, Drumcondra and that work is nearing completion. The purpose of the survey is to identify those schools that have the highest levels of concentration of pupils with background characteristics associated with educational disadvantage and early school leaving. This will greatly help us in tackling disadvantage.
I will make significant financial and staffing resources available in September to the selected schools that have the highest concentrations of at risk pupils and these resources will be increased substantially over the following two years. The supports will be allocated on a new basis that will differ significantly from the designated school approach at present in operation.
Supports for second-level schools under the new programme will be allocated under the "Stay in School" retention initiative. This initiative is concerned with increasing completion rates to senior cycle through strategies that counteract early school leaving. Selected schools must work in co-operation with local statutory and voluntary agencies to prepare plans to support young people at risk and their families. There are currently 57 schools in the initiative and I have decided to increase this number to 116 schools next September. I have also decided to recruit another co-ordinator, in addition to the existing two co-ordinators, to support the development of the initiative in schools.
I am satisfied the strategies outlined are those most supportive of schools, teachers and parents. The most effective route to improving reading standards in schools generally and to reducing the numbers of pupils with serious learning difficulties in literacy and numeracy is at the level of the individual pupil in the individual school. I will give every support to teachers and their pupils in tackling the persistent proportion of the community whose talents have been neglected for far too long.
I have noted the points raised by Members and I hope they recognise that the Government will implement a major plan of action during the next two years. This plan will have a major impact in terms of resolving the problems to which they referred.