In this episode of If I were the Minister for Education, I break down what happened after projected SNA allocations for the 2026/27 school year showed roughly 200 schools set to lose at least one Special Needs Assistant: not due to cuts or clerical error, but because of how the national redistribution model works under a capped total.
I explain the background to the current situation, including the long period where schools largely held on to allocations since around 2017, the return of NCSE-led reviews from 2023 onward, and how this year’s broader round of reviews led to some schools being told they had more SNAs than the model allowed.
I talk through the predictable political cycle that followed: schools and parents mobilised, pressure built, the Minister “paused” the process, additional funding was announced (€19 million), and the government confirmed no school would lose an SNA this year. While I’m relieved for schools, principals and SNAs facing uncertainty, I argue that pausing-and-funding responses don’t fix the underlying pattern and that we’re likely to repeat the same crisis again.
I also say I feel sorry for the NCSE in this instance because they became the visible face of a policy they were implementing, and I argue the real issue sits higher up the chain. I then outline what I see as the structural problem: Ireland’s primary schools are publicly funded but privately managed individual entities competing for enrolment, staff and survival, while staffing supports (SNA posts and SET hours) are allocated through a national, projection-based redistribution model. I describe how redistribution creates concentrated losers and dispersed winners, making it politically fragile, and I connect this to the annual “cluster games” around SET allocations.
Finally, I set out the kind of structural change I think is needed: moving away from competition as the organising principle by exploring regional employment and local coordination through education authorities, because I don’t believe repeated annual firefighting counts as planning. I also reference additional writing and commentary, including an Irish Independent piece by Fionnan Sheahan and analysis by Ciara Reilly, and I point listeners toward my Substack articles for more.
00:00 Welcome and Subscribe
00:47 SNA Allocations Fallout
02:30 How the SNA Model Works
04:28 From Freeze to Reviews
07:59 Backlash and the Pause
09:11 Predictable Crisis Cycle
10:03 Relief and Real Stakes
12:19 Why NCSE Took the Heat
14:06 Schools Compete to Survive
17:09 Redistribution vs Competition
18:25 SET Cluster Games Parallel
22:42 Politics and Concentrated Anger
29:29 What Would Actually Change
33:16 Final Thoughts and Goodbye
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Ireland