‘No child will lose learning supports’

PARENTS and teachers have welcomed Education Minister Mary Hanafin’s promise that no primary pupils will lose learning supports under a revised staffing system.

Problems have arisen in up to one-third of the country’s 3,300 schools, particularly in rural areas, where a new model of allocating staff has led to fears of children with learning difficulties losing resource teaching hours.

Ms Hanafin said she would review the model, introduced last summer by her predecessor Noel Dempsey, to ensure no child lost any teaching hours. The scheme sets out ratios of special needs staff for every school from next September, based on likely numbers of pupils with common learning difficulties.