This government is fully committed to supporting children with special educational needs to fulfil their full potential and the Programme for Government makes a number of commitments to deliver on this objective.
By the end of the year there will be over 20,000 special educational teachers and Budget 2026 is providing an additional 860 posts. For 2026/27 school year there will be just under 21,000 special education teachers in our schools, with more than 15,000 of these dedicated to supporting children in mainstream.
The Special Education Teacher (SET) allocation model provides schools with additional teaching hours to support the teaching needs of students in mainstream classes.
It is important to clarify that the SET model creates a learning need profile for every school of which enrolments is only one input.
The allocation model uses a variety of data, provided by each school to complete allocations. This data includes, enrolment data, data on educational needs profiles and data on educational disadvantage. All of these inputs are the most up to date available.
Where schools have a unique requirement in their school’s needs such as an immediate change in circumstances, and they have a concern about their allocation, there is an opportunity to seek a review from the National Council for Special Education before the start of the next school year. This review process has been streamlined to make it as easy as possible for schools and it should be noted that over 80% of schools who submitted valid reviews in advance of this school year received additional resources.
My Department will continue to work with all stakeholders on ensuring our allocation model is as responsive to school’s needs as possible.
