Disadvantaged winners with extra €740m

CHILDREN with special needs, living in disadvantaged areas or from non-English speaking backgrounds will be the big winners from the extra €740 million secured for next year’s spending by the Department of Education.

The €8.4 billion 2007 spending estimate announced by education minister Mary Hanafin is three times the department’s 1997 Budget, and almost half of next year’s increase — €355m — will fund additional pay.

It will help provide an extra 800 primary teachers, including 200 already announced a year ago to reduce primary class sizes.

Meanwhile, an extra 200 language teachers — most of them at primary level — will be appointed to schools with large numbers of pupils from non-national families who require special tuition in English. Teacher allocations are being finalised by Ms Hanafin’sofficials.

The increased funding will also support the full-year cost of extra special needs assistants (SNAs) appointed this year for children with special needs, under a 30% increase in the special education budget to €820m. Ms Hanafin said there are now 15,000 adults working solely with children with special needs in schools, and almost 1,500 of the 8,200 SNAs have been hired since September 2005.

“I know we have a lot more work to do to bring services up to the optimum level, so significant improvements are again planned for the coming year,” she said.

Among these will be a €1.5m package to provide significant increase in grants to meet the running costs of special schools and extra funding for pupils in special classes of mainstream schools.

A 13% increase in grants for day-to-day costs of primary schools was welcomed by the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) but general secretary John Carr said the level of funding remains far below that given to second-level schools. He expressed regret that more was not done to further reduce class sizes, which are the EU’s second highest, but he acknowledged the extra teachers for special needs children, newcomer children and the disadvantaged.

The budget for the disadvantaged rises 15% to €730m to further implement the DEIS plan for educational inclusion, while an extra €6m will help expand the National Behaviour Support Service, a rise cautiously welcomed by Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) president Tim O’Meara.

Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) general secretary John White welcomed increased special needs and language support staff but said the extra €210m second-level spend would do little to improve Ireland’s second-from-bottom OECD ranking on investment at this level.

The TUI and Irish Vocational Education Association warmly greeted Minister of State Síle de Valera’s announcement of provision within the extra €19m for adult and further education to fund changes, to be agreed with the Department of Education, in the structuring of the Post Leaving-Certificate sector.