Timmy Dooley
Question:58 Deputy Timmy Dooley asked the Minister for Education and Skills the reason a student (details supplied) at a school in County Clare has been refused access to a reader for the leaving certificate. [8120/11]
View answerThursday, 14 April 2011
Questions (58, 59, 60)
Timmy Dooley
Question:59 Deputy Timmy Dooley asked the Minister for Education and Skills the reason a student (details supplied) in County Clare has been refused a waiver from the assessment of spelling, grammar and punctuation language subjects. [8121/11]
View answerWritten answers
I propose to take Questions Nos. 58 and 59 together.
The State Examinations Commission has statutory responsibility for operational matters relating to the certificate examinations including organising the holding of examinations, determining procedures in places where examinations are conducted including the supervision of examinations and making arrangements for the marking of work presented for examination. The Commission operates a scheme of reasonable accommodation for certain students with special needs who are sitting the examinations. In view of this I have forwarded your query to the State Examinations Commission for direct reply to you.
Joanna Tuffy
Question:60 Deputy Joanna Tuffy asked the Minister for Education and Skills his plans regarding maintaining the number of special needs assistants in schools; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8124/11]
View answerThe Programme for Government clearly states that education will be a priority for this Government and that we will endeavour to protect and enhance the educational experience of children, young people and students. To that end, we will endeavour to protect front-line services in education.
However, the fiscal position is extremely difficult. This country is effectively in receivership. It is necessary to ensure that educational services are delivered within the resources available. I intend to prioritise and support special educational services. However, I cannot re-visit the previous Government's decision to place a cap on the number of posts available under the Special Needs Assistant (SNA) scheme. This number is 10,575 whole time equivalent (WTE) posts. This is a significant number of posts and unlike other areas of the public sector vacancies are being filled up to this number. It also represents continual increases in the number of SNAs over recent years. For example, there were 10,543 WTE SNA posts in place at the end of 2010 and 10,342 at end 2009. It is considered that with equitable and careful management and distribution of these resources that there should be sufficient posts to provide access to SNA support for all children who require such care support to attend school, in accordance with Departmental criteria.
The National Council for Special Education (NCSE) is responsible, through its network of local Special Educational Needs Organisers (SENOs) for allocating resource teachers and Special Needs Assistants (SNAs) to schools to support children with special educational needs. The NCSE operates within my Department's criteria in allocating such support. The NCSE has issued a circular to all schools advising of the allocation process for the 2011/2012 school year. A key feature of the amended scheme will be to provide for an annual allocation of Special Needs Assistant support to eligible schools.
My Department and I will be glad to consider any suggestions from school management or parent representative organisations as to how the allocation of SNA resources can best be managed within the context of the overall limit on SNA numbers established. In this regard I am committed to making whatever improvements are possible to the resource allocation system. We all have to understand the legacy of economic mismanagement which the last government gave to this country.