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Working Group to Develop New Model for Special Education – Quinn
- 03 July 2013
Education Minister Ruairi Quinn recently announced the appointment of Eamon Stack to chair the working group established to develop a new model for allocating resource teachers in schools. The group is being established by the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) which is chaired by Mr Stack. The group, which will include parents and advocacy groups will begin its work immediately.
It will provide an preliminary advice to Minister Quinn in September with advice on how to reform the way the substantial additional educational resources for pupils with special educational needs are allocated in the school system.
Watch the Minister’s doorstep interview on the group below…
The group will urgently probe the reasons for the unprecedented 12 per cent rise in applications for resource teacher support this year. This compares with an annual 1.3 per cent increase in the number of students attending school in the current year.
The Minister said:
The NCSE has recently advised me of the need to develop a new model for how additional teaching resources should be allocated to ensure that students who need the greatest level of support can receive it.
Today I am also announcing measures to retain the level of resource teachers available to students with special educational needs at the 2012/13 levels. This is a good day for special education, an area that I have passionately defended since coming into office. I have succeeded in protecting the 1.3 billion currently spent in this area.
Today I have secured Cabinet agreement to release 500 additional teaching posts to schools in September to cope with the alarming rise in the demand for these resources. These posts were set aside to meet the late demand expected to arise over the remainder of the next school year. This is a once-off measure that will have Budgetary implications which I have alerted my colleagues to today.
Source: MerrionStreet.ie - Working Group to Develop New Model for Special Education – Quinn
