Ms Noreen Duggan:

I thank the committee for affording me the opportunity to speak. I am principal of Scoil na Naomh Uilig in Newbridge. It is a fully inclusive school with 565 pupils from 31 ethnic backgrounds. The school caters for children of all abilities, from children with severe and profound learning disabilities to gifted children. We have five special classes dotted throughout the school building: three for children with autism and two for children with severe and profound learning disabilities. Each child is integrated wherever possible with his or her peers in mainstream classrooms. We also have excellent facilities for meeting children's sensory needs. We also have a very large cohort of children with moderate and multiple disabilities enrolled in our mainstream classes. We have gained a reputation for dealing positively with children with special needs. As a result, we are receiving more enrolments of children presenting with challenging behaviour. That is our reality. Every child in our school is a valued member of our community and we all learn from each other. There are a number of issues I wish to address. However, I must preface this by saying I am only speaking from my experience as principal of Scoil na Naomh Uilig.

The issues are access to education for children with special educational needs, nursing and clinical support, training, challenging behaviour, and access to DEIS status. The most pressing issue for us is access to education for children with special needs. Inclusivity is the way to go. Everyone in our school community benefits from the model we are developing. Our model was set up ten years ago and it needs to be replicated throughout the country both at primary and secondary level. In our school, there are eight children in fifth class. Some of the parents are here today because they cannot find suitable places for their children in the secondary school system. There are simply not enough places. These parents embraced inclusive education seven years ago, and now they are caught in limbo, with limited places available in mainstream secondary schools and no capacity in the special schools because they already have their own cohort of children coming forward from the primary system. It is unfair on these parents that they should have to search for and spearhead campaigns to find places for their children. It is their constitutional right. The Department needs to adopt a proactive approach to providing education for children with special needs at all levels. These parents should, like me, be able to go to the local secondary schools and see which one best fits their children's education.

The next issue I will address is nursing and clinical support. Our nurse was employed initially for 26.5 hours per week to care for the complex medical needs of three children.

Ten years later, her hours have been reduced to 24 per week and her workload, including copious amounts of paperwork, has significantly increased. She now looks after 35 children, nine of whom have complex medical needs. She is unable to take a lunch break and works, on average, nine hours extra per week for which she is not paid. Mr. Jim Mulkerrins, from the Department of Education and Skills, is meeting special schools in Dublin to examine the standardisation of nursing support throughout the system but this really needs to be addressed urgently.

Our school is very lucky in that it has access to clinical care but it takes up to 18 months for an initial assessment to take place. This is particularly unfair when one has a child with challenging behaviour. In fairness to the child, classmates and the teacher, access to psychological services needs to be immediate in a case such as this.

On training, there are many aspects. I have addressed them in my written submission. More comprehensive training for special education needs to be provided at initial teacher training level and also at school level. I take Dr. Ryan's points. In Scoil na Naomh Uilig, our more pressing issue is that substitute cover needs to be provided for peer training prior to a mainstream teacher taking a special class. Comprehensive training, which is currently available only on a limited basis for teachers in severe and profound autism classes, should be mandatory for every teacher taking such classes. A similar course is also necessary for dealing with challenging behaviour. A minimum qualification for bus escort and special needs assistance should be a FETAC level 6 qualification in child care and special needs. Teachers need training on the management of SNA staff. In an inclusive school, whole staff training is essential. The Department needs to give us clear guidelines, directions and training on restrictive practice in school. It is essential that training for dealing with special educational needs be mandatory and paid for by the Department and that substitute cover be provided.

The last point I would like to address is access to DEIS status. As I stated in my written submission, we do not have DEIS status. Our school has a very mixed population but more than 200 pupils in our school are from a socially disadvantaged background. If they were in a smaller school, they would qualify for DEIS status. The number of children with significant special educational needs should be a factor in the allocation of DEIS status. When we visited schools in Boston to examine their model for dealing with children with special needs, we found each child with special needs was counted as two children in the mainstream class. This meant the pupil-teacher ratio was immediately lowered. In a school like ours, the teachers' workload would be somewhat reduced. Surely some kind of sliding scale could be used to roll out the benefits of DEIS to all who need them. I thank members and will answer any questions they have afterwards.