Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 12 July 2018
192. Deputy Dessie Ellis asked the Minister for Education and Skills if consideration is being given to the creation of a DEIS+ band within the national DEIS programme to take account of the special requirements and unique complexities for certain schools (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32302/18]
View answerTackling educational disadvantage is a key priority for my Department. In order to achieve its vision for education to become a proven pathway to better opportunities for those in communities at risk of disadvantage and social exclusion, my Department has set the implementation of a renewed DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) programme as one of its key priorities.
Evaluations of DEIS to date have shown an overall improvement in educational outcomes in DEIS schools. DEIS Plan 2017 aims to build on what has already been achieved by schools who have benefitted from the additional supports available under the initial DEIS programme introduced in 2005.
While the allocation of additional teaching resources to DEIS Urban Band 1 schools, including the school in question, has served to improve learning outcomes, a gap still remained between DEIS and non-DEIS schools in terms of educational outcomes. Under DEIS Plan 2017, there is a commitment to carry out an evaluation of the level of teaching resources for schools participating in the School Support Programme. My Department established a Working Group to examine Class Size in late 2017.
To date there have been two meetings of this Group and work is underway on examining the various issues that arise in terms of determining optimum class size in DEIS Primary schools. The Group consists of representatives from the Educational Research Centre (ERC), the Education Partners and representatives from the relevant business units in my Department. It is intended that a short report will be prepared by the Working group which will be referred to the Advisory Group for consideration.
My Department’s Circulars govern staffing arrangements in all schools and are available on my Department’s website.
In addition my Department’s Circular 0013/2017 for primary schools set out the details of the new model for allocating special education teachers to schools.
The revised allocation process replaces the previous generalised allocation model combined with the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) allocation process which provided additional resource teaching supports to schools, to support pupils assessed as having Low Incidence disabilities.
The new Special Education Teaching allocation provides a single unified allocation for special educational support teaching needs to each school, based on each school’s educational profile.
No school, has lost supports as a result of the implementation of the new model. In addition, no school received an allocation, for the support of pupils with complex needs, less than the allocation they received to support such pupils during the 2016/17 school year.
The new allocation model takes account of the schools educational profile and includes a baseline component for every mainstream school to support inclusion. The profile also takes account of the number of students with complex special educational needs, the percentages of students performing below a certain threshold on standardised tests, and account of the social context of a school, including gender and educational disadvantage.
The NCSE Working Group, which recommended the new allocation model, advised that a school's social context can contribute strongly to the level of learning needs that students have in a school, as the socioeconomic status of students is linked to the incidence of certain types of special educational needs.
Some areas of special educational needs may be reflected in low test scores, while some students with relatively high levels of educational achievement may have emotional and behavioural difficulties. The profiled allocation for schools therefore contains provision to take account of social context, in addition to the other elements of the overall allocation.
Under the new special education teaching allocation model, the school referred to in this question, which also participated in the pilot of the new model, received an additional allocation of 47.5 hours, based on its school profile. This increased the allocation for the school from 77.50 hours to 125 hours. This additional allocation took account of the needs indicated by the profile of the school. It represents a very significant increase of almost 2 additional teachers to the school, to bring the total number of special education teachers in the schools to 5 additional teaching posts.
