598. Deputy Grace Boland asked the Minister for Education and Youth whether she is satisfied that schools have sufficient special education teaching resources to provide appropriate literacy and numeracy interventions for students experiencing persistent difficulties, including students with dyslexia and dyscalculia; and whether these allocations will be reviewed following the PISA 2025 results. [65233/26]

At the outset it is important to clarify that the primary responsibility for the education of all pupils in post primary schools, including those with special education learning needs, is the subject teacher.

My department provides Special Education Teacher (SET) supports to schools to ensure that pupils with special educational needs receive appropriate additional teaching support.

The special education teaching (SET) allocation provides schools with additional teaching hours to support the learning needs of students in mainstream classes based on their profile of need.

The SET allocation model is a standardised allocation model that provides schools with additional teaching hours to support the teaching needs of students in mainstream classes.

The SET allocation model distributes the total available number of Special Education Teaching posts in line with each school’s profile of need.

For the 2026/27 school year this will increase to over 15,200 SET posts to support pupils in mainstream classes. This is the highest number of additional teachers available to the education system.

The allocation model uses data from schools to complete allocations annually. This data includes data on educational needs profiles (literacy and numeracy performance of their pupil cohort).

Each school is responsible for ensuring that the SET resources provided are deployed in line with the continuum of support framework and focussed on the identified and recorded learning needs identified and recorded in the student support plans. The premise that the pupil with the greatest level of need received the greatest level is must be applied by each school.

Each year when the allocations are issued to schools, any school who believes that they do not have sufficient SET resources to meet the learning needs of their pupils can apply to the NCSE for a review of their SET allocation. When the NCSE undertake a review and if additional learning needs are identified additional SET resources are provided to the school to meet this need.

It should be noted that the number of schools requesting reviews in the last 2 years is approx. 4% and over 80% of schools who submitted a valid review for 2026/27 received an increase in their allocation.

My department and the NCSE are committed to delivering an education system that is of the highest quality and where every child and young person feels valued and is actively supported and nurtured to achieve their full potential.