Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 18 October 2012
139. Deputy Charlie McConalogue asked the Minister for Education and Skills if he will outline in tabular form the number of special needs assistants in our schools in 2012 and each year since 1997. [45564/12]
View answerI wish to advise the Deputy that the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) is responsible, through its network of local Special Educational Needs Organisers (SENOs), for processing applications from schools for special educational needs supports including Special Needs Assistant (SNA) support, to support children with special educational needs. The NCSE operates within my Department's established criteria for the allocation of such supports and the staffing resources available to my Department. There are 10,575 Whole Time Equivalent (WTE) SNA posts available for allocation in the 2012/13 school year which is the same number of posts which were available for allocation for the 2011/12 school year. The NCSE has notified schools of their SNA allocation for 2012/13, based on the number of valid applications received and the extent of the care needs of qualifying children. To date the NCSE has allocated 10,311 WTE SNA posts to schools. Every child who meets the criteria for access to SNA support in the current school year is in receipt of this support. This leaves 264 posts available for allocation throughout the school year for new assessments of disability, new entrants, or emergency or late applications, in accordance with the terms of the SNA scheme. The NCSE have estimated that based on the experience of last year, that it is estimated that these 264 posts should be sufficient to meet demand during the school year. Where schools have enrolled new pupils with special educational needs who were not considered at the time that the allocations for the 2012/13 school year were made, or where schools are in a position to demonstrate that they cannot cater for the care needs of qualifying children from the level of SNA support which has been assigned to them, they may apply to the NCSE for additional SNA support or for a review of their SNA allocation. The specific information requested by the Deputy in relation to the number of SNAs allocated for 1997 to 2011 is provided in the attached table. Finally, I wish to advise the Deputy that this Government has demonstrated its commitment to protecting services for children with special educational needs by maintaining the overall number of SNA posts which will be available for allocation to schools for the 2012/13 school year, at a time when there has been a requirement to make savings across a range of expenditure areas.
|
Year |
Number of Special Needs Assistants 1997 - 2011 |
|
*1997 |
270 |
|
*1998 |
293 |
|
*1999 |
558 |
|
*2000 |
1495 |
|
2001 |
2988 |
|
2002 |
4979 |
|
2003 |
5367 |
|
2004 |
5869 |
|
2005 |
7294 |
|
2006 |
8390 |
|
2007 |
9824 |
|
2008 |
10,442 |
|
2009 |
10,342 |
|
2010 |
10,543 |
|
**2011 |
10,117 (10,320) |
* SNA data from 1997 – 2011 relates to Primary and Special Schools only.
** Total number of SNA posts approved by the NCSE for the 2011/12 school year was 10,320. The figure of 10,117 represents the number of posts in place at the end of Dec 2011.
The NCSE allocated the bulk of SNA posts to schools at September 2011, based on the number of valid applications on hand at that time. This left 475 posts from the overall designated provision of 10,575 posts for later allocation throughout the school year to deal with emergency cases, new injuries or diagnosis, or new school entrants.
By the end of the 2011/12 school year, at June 2012, the NCSE had approved the allocation of 10,320 SNA posts to schools, from within the overall cap of 10,575 posts.
All children who qualified for access to SNA support, in accordance with the terms of the SNA scheme during 2011/12, received access to SNA support and there were sufficient posts to provide for such support from within the overall provision of 10,575 posts.
