Making better use of resources

Every ORRS-funded student generates:

• additional teacher time (either 0.1 or 0.2 of a teacher). SLS– funded students generate 0.1 of an additional teacher. This funding is provided directly to the student’s school by the Ministry of Education
• specialist services (ORRS and SLS) organised by the student’s fundholder
• teacher’s aide time allocated to the student’s school by the fundholder, as a contribution to meeting the student’s needs for teacher’s aide support.

With this approach, each student should receive a wrap-around package of services and support that is tailored to help them learn. In many cases this works well, but in other situations this way of providing services and support is problematic because:

• a school may have few, or only one, ORRS-funded students and be unable to employ an additional teacher for a small amount of time or with the necessary specialist skills^xvii. There is also a shortage of specialist teachers
• the additional teacher time may get lost in the general staffing entitlement for the whole school
• fundholders, specialists and schools spend a lot of time each year deciding how much teacher’s aide time each student’s school will get and it can be difficult to employ teachers’ aides with the right skills
• some schools and parents and caregivers would like more teacher’s aide time and less spent on specialist services.

Extra teacher time

One idea for improving the use of the extra teacher time is to change the way that the 0.1 and 0.2 allocations of extra teacher time for ORRS-funded students are made. It would be possible to bring the 0.1 and 0.2 allocations of a number of schools together in a cluster-type model.

Doing this across New Zealand would mean that:

• about 700-1,000 full-time teachers could be employed as ORRS specialist resource teachers across New Zealand; each teacher would support a number of students across a number of schools or be employed by a specialist provider
• there would be more incentive for teachers to gain qualifications as specialist teachers
• the teachers would be able to support each other for professional development and mentoring
• ORRS-funded students and their schools would get a more consistent standard of support
• teachers could specialise in particular areas eg behaviour.

If this approach is taken it would need to be done in a way that took account of the issues with cluster management raised in the recent Education Review Office report on Resource Teachers: Learning and Behaviour (RTLB). This report identified the need for strong external and internal accountabilities for the use of funding and management of RTLB clusters^xviii. We would also need to consider the requirements for specialist qualifications mentioned earlier.

Teachers' aides

It should be possible to make the process for allocating teachers’ aide time more efficient. Three potential ways of doing this are to:

• hold the reassessment of need (moderation round) less frequently, say every two years instead of every year
• establish a review period based on student need
• allocate teachers’ aide time to schools according to a formula. Schools would be allocated a standard amount of teachers’ aide time for all ORRS-funded students. Schools would then determine how the time was used.

Streamlining processes

At the moment all students apply for ORRS using the same process. However, it could be possible to streamline this process for some students by making better use of information that is already available. For example:

• five-year-olds who have been supported by special education early intervention programmes and with needs that are well-known to the Ministry of Education
• students who have been supported by other special education programmes for some time and who are not making the educational progress expected. For example, students who have been in the Supplementary Learning Support programme, the Communication Initiative, or the Behaviour Initiative for three years or more.

It is important to note that it is only the application process that would be streamlined. The criteria to access ORRS would be the same for all students.

In addition to these changes, the Office of the Auditor-General has recommended that the Ministry provide clearer information about which students are eligible to access ORRS^xix.

Question 5a

How can individually targeted services and supports be made more efficient?