Fine Gael TD for Galway West and Mayo South, Seán Kyne has welcomed the significant increase in resource teaching hours in Galway schools for the coming school year.
From September, Galway schools will benefit from 11,322 resource teaching hours provided by over 486 resource teaching posts. Galway’s primary schools have been allocated 313 resource teaching posts while Galway’s secondary schools have been allocated 173 posts for the coming school year.
The allocations have been made by the National Council for Special Education (NCSE ) which is the State agency with responsibility for assessing additional educational needs and for allocating resources including learning resource hours and Special Needs Assistants.
“From September there will be over 7,500 resource teaching hours provided for pupils in Galway’s primary schools with over 3,800 hours for students at Galway’s secondary schools. “The recovery in our economy and in the State’s finances has facilitated investment to the extent that the NCSE’s allocation for Galway for September 2016 represents a 40 per cent increase on the comparable figures for September 2012 which were announced in June of that year.
“It is very encouraging to see such significant investment in resource teaching in Galway. Resource teachers are assigned on the basis of student need rather than being assigned to individual schools. The resource teachers provide vital and targeted support to primary and secondary students with educational needs and are additional to mainstream class teachers,” he said.
