Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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The first item selected is in the names of Deputies Sorca Clarke, Ruairí Ó Murchú and Aodhán Ó Ríordáin. They wish to discuss the revised special education teacher allocation model and the calculation of the set allocation for schools for the year 2024 to 2025. This matter was raised earlier and was addressed by the Minister. I call Deputy Clarke.

Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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Deputy Ó Ríordáin is not here yet and he is listed to speak first, but we will go ahead.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Yes, people have to be here when it is their time to speak.

Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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Every child has a constitutional right to an education and everyone agrees that no child should be left behind. Last month, the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, published its report, An Inclusive Education for an Inclusive Society, which shows a majority of those who engaged with the consultation agreed that children, even those with special educational needs, should be educated in the same school as others. However, they expressed fears about supports in mainstream schools for students with complex needs. The recalculation of allocation for special education teachers does nothing but compound that fear. Some 76.4% of those who engaged in the National Principals Forum survey said that primary school allocations next year would be wholly inadequate and 37% of principals reported a decrease in their allocation despite evidence that classrooms have a higher number of children with additional needs than ever before. The Irish National Teachers Organisation, INTO, believes that for children with multiple needs, these allocations are fundamentally flawed and that the over-emphasis on literacy and numeracy fails to take into account those multiple needs and is in effect counterproductive to the excellent work teachers do to improve literacy and numeracy as it may result in decreased allocations. Inclusion Ireland has said that the decision to remove complex needs will make an already broken system even less accessible for children. AsIAm has said that this change will impact on the most vulnerable children in schools who require the highest levels of support and they risk receiving less support this September as a result of these changes. Ultimately, it will push more students from mainstream education into special schools or special classes, re-enforcing the words of those who took part in the consultation with the NCSE.

Will the Minister of State please review this decision? It is not only those of us on this side of the House who are saying there is a problem. It is groups who are involved in the lives of the children who are most impacted by this decision who are saying it. Parents are saying it. Schools are saying it. Everyone is saying it. I ask the Minister of State today to review the decision.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
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The Minister of State will appreciate that this is extremely serious. This is the third time I have raised this. I raised it with Deputy Gannon the other night in oral questions and with the Taoiseach yesterday. We would not be raising this if it were not for the deluge of schools making contact with us. They are horrified about what these changes will mean for them. They cannot get their heads around why complex needs have now been taken out as a criterion. In presenting this as a positive adjustment, the Minister of State said that 67% of schools will have enhanced hours or will remain the same. That means that 33% of schools will lose out. She says it will be no more than five hours, but for those schools that is a very detrimental change.

The Minister of State has spoken about the wide-scale consultation she undertook and Department officials are saying the same, but the INTO has said this is fundamentally flawed. Other lobby groups in this area are saying the same. There does not seem to be anyone who agrees with the Minister of State on this change. On that basis, I agree with other speakers that she must review this, put a stop to it and start again.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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This is straightforward. We have had an over and back. Like Deputy Ó Ríordáin, I brought it up with the Taoiseach and the Minister of State. As I told her recently, I happened to meet representatives of Scoil Mhuire na nGael in this House and they said they initially thought they may lose two teaching positions and they will definitely lose one. Fiona Mhic Chonchoille of Scoil Naomh Lorcan, Omeath contacted me to say that special education teachers were at their wits end. We are hearing about increased numbers but we are not seeing it. We are talking about kids with complex needs who at this point in time might be scoring highly in maths and English, but if they do not get the supports on the basis of their complex needs, as other speakers have said, they will be forced into special schools. We need to look at these anomalies and deal with this.

Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputies for their contributions. As they correctly pointed out, I have already spoken to most of them on this matter. A number of different misperceptions have been presented in the House and I hope I can address them.

First, there have not been any cuts to special education teacher, SET, posts. There are now more SETs than ever before. This year there will be 14,600 SETs, which is an increase of 1,000 from last year. In the past ten years the number of SETs has doubled to the record figure of 14,600. It is also important to remember that this model does not change the fact that 90% of children with additional needs are in mainstream provision. This is a distribution model to ensure that the children with the greatest level of need in mainstream education can get access to additional teaching support. It provides a transparent means of allocating SET resources to best meet the needs of children and ensure consistency and equity in the system.

Deputies will be aware that this model was introduced in 2017 and there was some criticism after that so the model was updated in 2022, based on feedback from schools and stakeholders. Any updates to the model since then do not change the key principle, which is that the teacher and school know best which children require SET support.

The 2017 model was not updated every year, but rather every two to three years. The model did not keep pace with mainstream allocations and changes to school populations and therefore special education need, SEN, profiles in the school. This was especially true of developing schools, which are those that are rapidly increasing enrolments. As the demographics moved from primary age to post-primary age, there was no mechanism to move the SET support to where it was most needed. Schools expressed concerns that the supports from the HSE to include speech and language therapy and occupational therapy were not routinely available. Therefore there was concern that the HSE would not have a full understanding of the complex needs in the school. Schools were also concerned that some children in their schools were on waiting lists with the HSE and they would not be reflected in the HSE data, even if the data was returned in full. Schools also reported that girls had SENs but these were largely masked or undiagnosed in younger age groups unless they were very complex. Complex needs in girls tend to appear at a later age, but manifest in different ways, including later.

As a number of assertions have been made about the lack of engagement, it is important to stress again that a total of 30 meetings were held as part of the development process, which included 12 consultation sessions that were held with education partners, including management bodies and staff representatives, in the development of the updated model. There was significant engagement with education partners on this. In addition, the NCSE undertook approximately 40 reviews with individual schools to get their feedback for incorporation into the updated model. There have been assertions that complex needs will not be taken into account. That is not correct. The complex needs that were provided for by the HSE since 2017 have been inconsistent, increasingly so in recent years. The data on complex needs was sourced from the HSE which had developed criteria to determine eligibility for access to the children's disability network teams, CDNTs.

For 2023 to 2024, only 5% of verifiable data was returned from the CDNTs despite numerous follow-ups. This meant that for schools for which no data was returned, even when there was a significant need, they would lose resources to those small schools for which there was a return. This created as a by-product a serious inequity in the distribution of resources.

Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister of State said there are more special education teachers than ever before. There is also evidence that classrooms have a higher percentage of children with additional needs than ever before. I go back to that broken system that Inclusion Ireland spoke of. The Minister of State is familiar with Sarah Dooley, who has been in contact with her office. This is the real-life impact of that broken system. Her sons, John and Patrick, have applied to 19 schools but have not received one offer. Both little boys have ASD and global development delay and are non-verbal. This is the reality whereby parents of children with additional educational needs are consistently and constantly being met with road blocks and blockages to their accessing the constitutional right to education.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
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It seems from the Minister of State's reply that because one element of Government is making a bags of how it treats children with additional needs, the Minister of State has to take up the slack because children are languishing on waiting lists for assessment and, therefore, the Department of Education has to change its allocation model because the data is not available. It is a complete failure of the entirety of Government. It appears the Minister of State's view is that she is right and everyone else is wrong, including the INTO, AsIAm, individual parents and individual schools. Nobody has been suggesting that there have been cuts to the overall number of special education teachers. The Minister of State should not say that. We are saying that it will have a disproportionate negative effect on a number of schools. They are all pretty horrified by the change. Can we pause it or put a stop to it, have another round of collaboration, negotiation and consultation, and then revisit the issue? The Government cannot continue as is because there is a lot of hurt out there.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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That is it. We could all name parents and multiple schools - I am afraid to ring any more of them - who think they will be detrimentally affected by the hours that they require to provide the supports for children with special educational needs. I know engagement has started with some of the officials in the Department, and I welcome that. However, on the basis of what the INTO and others have said, and even the information we have put forward, we must look at these cases from the point of view of not being able to deliver and that children will not get the resources they require. Therefore, we have to at least consider that this allocation model needs to be reviewed if it is to deliver. If there is an issue regarding HSE information, that will need to be dealt with but we know we need to have flexibility, particularly when dealing with children with complex needs who are being failed across the board.

Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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There are 3,000 special classes in the country. We have advanced planning and forward planning consistently. Every child known to the NCSE received a place last year and that will also be the case this September. I do not accept the argument that a significant amount of work has not been done or is not being done with regard to special classes in general. However, if the Deputies have a particular case, they can let me know about it and we will engage on it. I am not saying that anybody is wrong. I am saying I must refute the assertion that has been made to me on numerous occasions that there was no engagement or insufficient or improper engagement. Thirty meetings have been held as part of this development process and 12 of those consultation sessions were held with education partners. I am answering with regard to engagement and it is important that this is noted.

A review process is available. Schools can fill in an application form for a review on the NCSE website and submit it through the school portal. It is important that this is done. This new model provides a solid foundation for a roadmap of continuous enhancement over the coming years. No complex needs hours have been removed from the model. The hours have been reapportioned as an indicator of educational need. Complex needs are measured in two ways. First, those students who are performing at the lower levels in standardised tests that indicate the greatest level of need for additional learning support and, second, the pupils with more complex needs and who have been exempted are given the highest weighting within the model.