Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 7 December 2016
100. Deputy Jonathan O'Brien asked the Minister for Education and Skills the number of special needs assistants who are having their service shared by more than one child; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38979/16]
View answerThe National Council for Special Education (NCSE), which is an independent statutory agency, is responsible, through its network of Special Educational Needs Organisers (SENOs), for processing applications from schools for special educational needs supports, including S support. The NCSE allocates S support to schools in accordance with the criteria set out in the Department's Circular 0030/2014, which is available on the website at www.education.ie.
This Circular notes that responsibility for deciding on the quantum of educational supports and resources to be allocated to schools to support pupils with special educational needs rests with the NCSE.
It also sets out that S allocations are not made to individual children, but are made to schools to support the care needs of children with assessed special educational needs in the school. In making allocations to schools, the NCSE takes into account the assessed individual needs of all children with identified needs in the school.
Once the allocations have been made to schools it is a matter for schools to make provision for the care needs of qualifying pupils and to allocate S support to provide for their care needs, as those needs arise. Almost all of the allocations for S support made to mainstream schools are therefore shared school based resources, while all of the allocations made to special schools and classes are shared S resources.
Recent years have seen very significant increases in the number of Special Needs Assistants (Ss) which are being provided to schools to support children with special educational care needs. The number of S posts available for allocation to schools has increased from 10,575 posts in 2011, to 12,900 Special Needs Assistants (Ss) have been made available for allocation to primary and secondary schools to the end of 2016, at a total gross annual cost of €425 million.
Details of all of the S allocations made to schools are published on the NCSE website at http://ncse.ie/statistics.
