Gary Gannon
Ceist:79. Deputy Gary Gannon asked the Minister for Education the number of additional resource hours on the OLCS system to be taken by the end of the academic year. [25132/21]
Amharc ar fhreagraThursday, 13 May 2021
Ceisteanna (79)
Freagraí scríofa
As the Deputy will be aware schools are allocated special educational support based on their educational profile. There are currently over 13,600 Special Education Teachers allocated to mainstream primary and post primary schools. The Special Education Teacher allocation process provides a single unified allocation for special education support teaching needs to each school, based on each schools education profile.
Depending on the number of hours allocated, the school can employ a full-time teacher or cluster with other schools to employ a teacher on a shared basis. Where a school does not form a cluster with another school, the school will apply to the Department to have these hours recorded on the Online Claims System (OLCS) as part-time Special Education Teaching hours. Schools can then choose to utilise these hours to employ a teacher for a specified period towards the end of the year.
The current position is that there are 22,415 part-time Special Education Teacher (SET) hours which is the equivalent of 24.5 full-time teaching posts remaining on the OLCS to be utilised by 201 schools in the primary school sector in the current school year.
Some schools bank their hours to be used and employ a teacher toward the end of the year. Ultimately it is a matter for the school authority to identify how best to use their hours to support the children in the school.
It is not possible to extract the number of hours remaining for Secondary, Community or Comprehensive Schools as this information is not recorded separately from other part-time hour allocations.