Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire
Ceist:393. Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire asked the Minister for Education the number of children with special educational needs in primary, post-primary and special schools in tabular form. [5999/21]
Amharc ar fhreagraWednesday, 3 February 2021
Ceisteanna (393)
Freagraí scríofa
I wish to advise the Deputy that for the 2019/20 school year there were 8,224 pupils enrolled to special schools. All special schools are classified as primary national schools.
There were also 10,328 pupils enrolled to special classes including 7,520 pupils enrolled to special classes in primary schools and 2,808 pupils enrolled to special classes in post primary schools.
Special school placements are provided for other children with very complex special needs who wouldn’t manage in a mainstream school even for part of the week.
Special classes are provided for children with more complex needs who are unable to access the curriculum in a mainstream class, even with support, for most or all of their school day.
In relation to the number of pupils with special educational needs who attend mainstream schools, from 2017 a new model for allocating special education teachers to schools was introduced.
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. This model has replaced the previous model of allocating resource teaching support and learning support to schools.
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.
The school will take account of learning needs of children as evidenced by performance in schools but also supported where relevant by information provided regarding the nature of a condition that a pupil may have.
The Department of Education and Skills has published guidelines for schools as to how they should utilise and deploy their resources under the new allocation model, which are available at www.education.ie.
The guidelines support schools in how they identify pupils for additional teaching support and decide how much support to provide for pupils who need it.
Under the special education teacher allocation model schools are frontloaded with resources, based on each schools profile, to provide supports immediately to those pupils who need it without delay.
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.
Schools also do not have to give a set amount of time to pupils based on their disability category. They can give the most assistance to the pupils who need the support most and allocate resources based on needs.
Accordingly, schools have discretion to allocate additional teaching time to pupils with special educational needs, or additional learning needs, in mainstream schools, without a requirement for a formal diagnosis of a particular disability. As this identification of need, and distribution of teaching time, occurs locally within schools, my Department does not hold details of the total number of pupils receiving additional teaching support on the basis of having special educational needs in mainstream schools.