Charlie McConalogue
Question:267. Deputy Charlie McConalogue asked the Minister for Education and Skills the number of resource teachers for Travellers currently employed in primary and in post-primary schools here. [9066/14]
View answerTuesday, 25 February 2014
Questions (267)
Written answers
I wish to advise the Deputy that a decision was taken by the previous Government as part of the December 2010 budgetary process that Traveller pupils who are eligible for learning support teaching should receive this tuition through the existing learning support provision in schools. The General Allocation Model, which provides additional learning support and resource teaching allocations for primary schools, was updated for all primary schools from the 2012/13 school year and now includes the traveller pupils who had previously been supported by Resource Teacher for Traveller (RTT) posts under the General Allocation Model.
Limited alleviation measures were put in place to assist schools who had high concentrations of Traveller pupils previously supported by Resource Teacher for Traveller posts/hours, in the context of the limited resources available. A total of 141 posts have been allocated to schools for this purpose. 81 posts were used to readjust Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) allocations to include Traveller pupils previously supported by Resource Teacher for Traveller posts. 38 alleviation posts were provided for schools that had high numbers or concentrations of Traveller pupils who were previously supported by RTT posts and a further 22 alleviation posts were allocated to schools who had the highest percentage of traveller pupils previously supported by RTT posts, in comparison to other schools, taking into account their overall pupil populations, and who had not qualified for the first round of alleviation posts. Of these 60 alleviation posts, 40 were allocated to primary schools and 20 to post primary schools.