Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 21 June 2016
195. Deputy Thomas Byrne asked the Minister for Education and Skills the number of applications from schools he received for special educational needs posts in 2016 and the number of applications by county. [17019/16]
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 allocating special educational needs supports, including Special Needs Assistants (SNAs) and Resource Teaching support to schools to support children with special educational needs. The NCSE operates within my Department's criteria in allocating such support. All schools were asked to submit applications for SNA and Resource Teaching support for the 2016/17 school year to the NCSE by 29th February this year. This year, 12,900 SNAs are available for allocation to schools, which is an increase of almost 22% in the number of posts available since 2011, which was 10,575 posts. The NCSE advised all schools of their allocations for SNA support for the coming 2016/17 school year, on 14th June, 2016, based on the number of valid applications received to date. The NCSE has now allocated 12,635 Whole Time Equivalent SNA posts to schools, which is 711 posts additional to 11,924 SNA posts which were allocated at the end of the 2015/16 school year. A total of 7452 resource teaching posts is also available to the NCSE to allocate to schools for the coming 2016/17 school year, which is an increase of over 600 posts on the current years allocation, and an increase of 41% over the numbers allocated since 2011, which was 5265 posts. The NCSE advised all schools, on 28th April, 2016, of their allocations for resource teaching support for September 2016. 7015 posts were allocated to schools at that time. Details of all of the allocations which have been made to schools for SNA and resource teaching support, on a per county and per school basis, have been published on www.ncse.ie.
The NCSE continues to accept applications in recognition that enrolments may not have been completed or where assessments were not completed. The NCSE will consider these applications and make further allocations to schools in respect of valid applications which have been received to September. As the Deputy's question relates to the number of invalid applications received, additional to the allocations made, for resource hours and SNA support, I have referred this question to the NCSE for their consideration and direct reply to the Deputy.
