Vol. 518 No. 4
259 Mr. Creed asked the Minister for Education and Science the amount of money spent by his Department each year as a percentage of total primary school payroll costs on in-service training; and the level of training provided or required by his Department for teachers holding remedial posts in primary schools and in particular regarding their training and competence for remedial literacy and numeracy difficulties. [12005/00]
Data on the percentage of total primary school payroll costs spent on inservice training are not available at present but will be furnished to the Deputy as soon as possible.
The existing full-time programmes of pre-service teacher training in the colleges of education contain appropriate elements to assist the student teachers in recognising and dealing with children with special needs. At second level, there are inputs to the higher diploma in education, as part of a general alertness orientation programme, on a variety of learning difficulties which pupils may have.
Training for serving remedial teachers is provided on postgraduate diploma courses in six centres, as follows: St. Patrick's College of Education, Drumcondra, Church of Ireland College of Education, Rathmines, Mary Immaculate College of Education, Limerick, St. Angela's College of Education, Sligo, University College, Cork, University College, Galway.
Each venue caters for up to 25 remedial teachers who, with the exception of St. Patrick's College which caters for primary teachers only, are selected from both primary and second-level schools. The training is organised differently in each of the centres but totals approximately 140 tuition hours in every case.
