Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 20 July 2016
158. Deputy Thomas Byrne asked the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated costs of increasing the resource teaching hours allocations from 85% of special education review committee recommended allocation levels to 92.5% and to 100% of recommended hours. [23195/16]
View answerI wish to advise the Deputy that spending on provision for children with Special Educational Needs has been prioritised in recent years, despite the enormous pressures on all public spending.
Funding for special education provision in 2016 will amount to some €1.4 billion, which is equivalent to approximately 17% of the gross overall current allocation for education and training. It has increased by 10% in the past two years.
This funding provides for a range of supports and services, including additional learning and resource teaching support.
There are currently over 11,800 Learning Support and Resource Teacher posts in mainstream primary and post primary schools, providing additional teaching support to pupils with special educational needs.
A total of 7452 resource teaching posts is 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 invited all schools to make applications for resource teaching support, for the 2016/17 school year, by 29th February. 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 these allocations are available at www.ncse.ie. The remainder of the 7452 available are available for allocation by the NCSE to meet demand from further valid applications which may be received to September 2016. It is expected that the remaining posts will be sufficient to meet this demand.
The Deputy will be aware that a pilot of the proposed new allocation model has been taking place across a number of schools in advance of implementation in the school system generally.
The pilot has been developed in order to test the model and to allow for the practical effect of the application of the new model in the 47 pilot schools to be evaluated.
A review of the pilot has now commenced. This review will allow us to take into account the learning experiences of schools, principals, pupils and the views of parents over the course of the pilot.
On conclusion of the review a decision will be taken on the timeframe for the full implementation of the proposed new allocation model.
The cost of adding an additional 7.5% to the existing allocation bringing the allocation level to 92.5% of the recommended allocation levels would be €33.5m for some 559 posts.
The cost of a 15% increase bringing the allocation level to 100% of recommended levels would be €67m for 1118 posts.
