Ms Mary Byrne:

There were one or two other questions that arose that I would like to address. One concerned English as an additional language, EAL. In our consultations it was put to us that the social context element should include children with English as an additional language because schools felt it would be very important that those children would be included in building the profile of the school.

Another question was asked about junior and senior infants classes, which would not have standardised test results available. We are trying to build a profile of the school, so we would have, or would hope to have information about junior and senior infants pupils who have complex needs. In relation to standardised tests, we would be picking the instances in the school where those tests are done, like second class, fourth class and sixth class, and we would be using those results to build a profile for the rest of the school and that would include the junior and senior infants cohorts.

In addition to the point that Ms Griffin made about us emphasising the importance of assessment, one person asked if this would wipe out individual education plans, IEPs. On the contrary, it places great importance on planning for children in schools and we have recommended that, at the end of the year, schools might provide some information on how the targets that were set in the plans for children were reached. It thus places an importance on individualised planning for children.

One person asked about a child with very high medical needs who might do very well on the standardised STen scores, but might still have learning difficulties in other areas. It is important for people to understand that our proposed model is about how we get the resources into schools. The school can then decide what the needs of the children are. There is nothing in our model that precludes a school from identifying that a child needs particular support in an area.