The Department of Education and Skills has this week announced the implementation of a new model for the allocation of special educational teaching resource to mainstream primary and post-primary schools.

Further information on this announcement can be found at the following link:

https://www.education.ie/en/Press-Events/Press-Releases/2017-Press-Releases/PR2017-01-18.html

The new model will allocate teachers to schools on the basis of the profiled educational needs of each school, rather than being diagnosis-led. The key benefits identified by the Department of Education and Skills arising from this approach are:

• Barriers to accessing resources will be removed and children who need support can have that support provided immediately rather than having to wait for a diagnosis.
• Resources will be linked with genuine need, and children will not be unnecessarily, or inappropriately, labelled in order to access resources
• Resources will be linked closely with the learning needs of children
• It will ensure that children with special educational needs are properly integrated into the school
• Schools will be able to allocate resources to pupils taking into account their individual learning needs as opposed to requiring a particular diagnosis of disability.
• It will support inclusion and early intervention

An additional 900 teachers have been allocated to support the implementation of this model, which will commence in September 2017. This allocation means that no school will lose teaching resources that are currently allocated, even if the school profiling under the new model would indicate a lower allocation.