9,079 pupils with special needs seek extra hours

MORE than 9,000 students with special educational needs have sought additional teaching hours that are being monitored closely by the Department of Education because of staffing limits under the EU/IMF bailout.

Figures obtained from the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) show that applications were made up to a May 13 deadline for resource teaching for 3,549 primary pupils and 5,530 students in second-level schools next September.

The council’s approval is needed for extra teaching for all second-level students with a range of learning difficulties and for primary pupils with more serious issues such as autism.

The NCSE said it has so far granted applications in relation to 5,734 students, 3,339 at second-level and 2,395 for primary. The remaining applications were either incomplete or did not meet criteria for support. But the number of resource teachers needed to meet the needs of approved applicants has yet to be determined.

Schools were told by the Department of Education this week they would only be allocated 90% of the identified needs for NCSE-sanctioned resource teaching, with the possibility of additional hours being given in September depending on the level of late applications and other factors.

Education Minister Ruairí Quinn rejected descriptions of the measure as a 10% cut, saying an initial 90% allocation was the best approach as it allows schools to proceed with employing special needs staff. Supports for students with special needs will continue to be allocated based on need rather than resources, he insisted.

However, his department has not sought Department of Finance permission to exceed its ceiling of 9,960 resource teachers. It also imposed a cap on the number of special needs assistants giving classroom care to pupils with disabilities at the 10,575 who were employed in schools last December.

Based on patterns for 2010, the number of special needs teachers allocated to primary schools to cater for pupils with more common learning difficulties is likely to increase by more than 100 to almost 4,700 by year’s end. These posts are sanctioned directly by the department under a general allocation model, depending on the number of pupils in each school.

This would leave schools free to appoint less than 5,300 resource teachers with NCSE sanction. But more than 300 additional resource teachers were approved between this time last year and the end of 2010, while on April 1, 5,318 NCSE-sanctioned special needs teachers were already being paid by the department.

In the absence of further detail on how many teachers will be needed to meet the needs of successful NCSE applications, these trends suggest there may still be a shortfall of around 300 resource teachers required to meet the needs of all pupils with learning difficulties, roughly 3% of all such posts currently in the system.