Pádraig O'Sullivan
Question:305. Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Education the number of children with special educational needs who are in Ireland; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [34119/21]
View answerThursday, 24 June 2021
Questions (305, 306)
Pádraig O'Sullivan
Question:306. Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Education the number of special educational needs for schools in Ireland; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [34120/21]
View answerWritten answers
I propose to take Questions Nos. 305 and 306 together.
My Department continues to prioritise investment in special education, with over €2 Billion due to be spent on special education this year.
For the coming school year there will be over 13,600 Special Education Teachers allocated to mainstream schools, who will support class teachers to address the special educational needs and learning needs of pupils who attend mainstream schools.
This year we are also providing for two new special schools and 269 new special classes.
For the 2021/22 school year we will have a total of 2118 special classes, which is the largest number of special classes that we have ever had, and compares to 548 classes available in 2011.
18,000 Special Needs Assistants will also be available to support the care needs of pupils with special educational needs in our schools.
The Special Education Teachers which are allocated to mainstream schools support the mainstream class teacher by providing additional teaching support for pupils with special educational needs, or additional learning needs, in schools.
DES Circular 007/2019 for primary schools and 008/2019 for post primary schools set out the details of the model for allocating special education teachers to schools.
The 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.
The Special Education Teacher allocation, allows schools to provide additional teaching support for all pupils who require such support in their schools and for schools to deploy resources based on each pupil’s individual learning needs.
It gives greater flexibility to schools as to how they can deploy their resources, to take account of the actual learning needs pupils have, as opposed to being guided by a particular diagnosis of disability, and schools are guided as to how they should make such allocation decisions.
Children who need support can have that support provided immediately rather than having to wait for a diagnosis.
Children do not have to be labelled with a particular condition to qualify for extra teaching assistance.
The model gives greater freedom to schools to give extra teaching help to the pupils who most need it, regardless of their diagnosis.
As children who have additional learning needs can now be supported in school regardless of whether they have a diagnosis of a particular special educational need, or not, and the decisions as to which children receive additional support are made at local level.
It is therefore not possible to state definitively how many pupils are receiving additional support in mainstream schools on the grounds that they have some form of additional learning needs or special educational needs
The NCSE research paper ‘A Study on the Prevalence of Special Educational Needs’ (2011) noted that the Growing Up in Ireland analysis, which combined data on children from two sets of key informants (parents and teachers) to generate a new estimate of SEN prevalence as defined in EPSEN Act’s broader definition of SEN, which referred to ‘a restriction in the capacity of a person to participate in and benefit from education on account of an enduring physical, sensory, mental health or learning disability, or any other condition which results in a person learning differently from a person without that condition, pointed to an overall prevalence rate of up to 25 per cent.
As all mainstream schools receive allocations of special education teaching support, all schools are resourced to provide for the education of pupils with special educational needs.
For the 2021/22 school year there will also be a total of 2118 special classes in mainstream schools, providing additional specialised educational services for pupils with more complex special educational needs. This is the largest number of special classes that we have ever had, and compares to 548 classes available in 2011.
For the 2019/20 school year, 10,328 pupils attended special classes, which represents just over 1% of the total pupil population.
There are also 124 special schools which provide specialist educational services for pupils who have the most servere or complex levels of disabilities, or special educational needs.
For the 2019/20 school year, 8,224 pupils attended special schools, representing less than 1% of the total pupil population.
The remainder of pupils who have additional learning needs or special educational needs attend mainstream schools.
Question No. 306 answered with Question No. 305.