Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend all the members of the NCSE and thank them for their attendance. I acknowledge they have done substantial work on the report, which I appreciate. I do, however, have some concerns and I speak as somebody who taught as a learning support teacher and as a school principal. I feel there are gaps that need to be addressed first. I wonder are we jumping on too soon to something instead of fixing the little gaps and closing the little chinks in the system. My first observation is on resource teachers. The 900 resource teacher allocation is welcome but I submitted a parliamentary question to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the information I received was that to restore the 15% cut to resource teachers, 1,118 resource teachers are needed. I want to make the point that while there is a lot of work being done here and we are moving in the right direction, there are gaps and there are things I will question.

There is an appeal process for the schools around their educational profile and for parents who may wish to appeal. That process needs to be very robust and needs to be fair to both schools and parents. With the educational profile, weighting is given to the standardised testing scores. This is the second issue with regard to weighting and the school's profile. On looking at the research done on inclusion and the index for inclusion, which was a great piece of work, I question whether we are moving towards a polarised system in which we have schools that will be like special schools because they will have a huge cohort of children who are achieving low standardised scores.

Those are the schools that inevitably will secure more resources. Other schools, which are victims of their own success to a certain degree and do not have children scoring so low, will have fewer resources. Therefore there will be a tendency for parents to push towards the schools that have the resources. Are we moving away from the whole notion of meaningful inclusion? We have to embrace diversity, including diversity of ability. I am questioning that element of the model as well.

As a principal and learning support teacher, I was very frustrated at times over the procedures one had to go through to get resources for a child. On the inclusion-support service the document specifies that two stages of the continuum of support must be engaged with before the support could be accessed. At first I thought it was positive, but then I read the document outlining the requirement for the two stages. That will cause terrible frustration for teachers. They put problem-solving strategies in place and have meetings with their support teachers. That is an unnecessary layer. If a school needs to access that service due to exceptional circumstances, it should not be put through the whole rigmarole of going through two steps of the continuum of support. I am speaking from personal experience, as well as having spoken to teachers and principals on the issue.

I would be concerned if there is a move away from assessment by NEPS. There is a need for assessment and a need to produce an individual education plan for children. While planning is mentioned in the document, I saw no specific mention of IEPs. Is there a change in thinking on that? Is this a gap-filler until the EPSEN Act is implemented? In terms of cost, would we not be better off if we were to try to implement the IEP dimension of the EPSEN Act? Schools already have classroom planning and subject planning. Why not put planning in place for children with special needs? Many teachers are doing that already and it is recommended. Would it not be better to focus on that element of the EPSEN Act and put that in place?

Does the NCSE intend to provide more up-to-date costing for the implementation of the EPSEN Act in full? Does the NCSE intend to provide a breakdown of costs associated in terms of implementing various aspects of the EPSEN Act, such as if we were just to focus on the IEP aspect? Has the Department requested this? How much would it cost to implement specific provisions such as the individual education plan? We need to focus on that area.

I read the document in detail. It mentioned the involvement of the SENO in preschools and in data collection for children with complex needs. While I welcome that approach, there are serious problems at preschool level. I have received complaints that the waiting time in my constituency for children to get assessment of needs is between 12 months and 18 months. Should the SENO not be involved in a more constructive role at that level rather than data collection? We might be skating round the edges and not dealing with the problem at the centre of that.

Those are the concerns that struck me immediately on reading the document; obviously there are many more. Did the Irish-medium schools involved in the pilot express concerns over the resources as Gaeilge for SNAs?