Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am very interested in this issue. I taught for 16 years in a DEIS school which had a huge cohort of children with varied special educational needs. I am completely aware of where resources are lacking. The issue is, therefore, very close to my heart. I have a couple of questions which I will not field to anybody in particular.

On the workload of educational welfare officer, is there a maximum number of schools an officer can look after? Is it a problem? Can up to 30 or 40 schools be assigned to one officer? How can an officer possibly track non-attendance if he or she has such a vast number of schools to look after?

In respect of reduced and limited timetables which may have been mentioned by Dr. Ryan, are there specific guidelines or structures for schools or is the issue managed on a school-by-school basis? Is it the case that school A could be doing it one way, while school B down the road might be using a different way altogether?

I was interested in the suggestion of co-teaching. I did some as part of the Droichead scheme about four years ago when a student teacher came and it worked very well. There were also two SNAs in the room with 18 students. I thought it was fantastic and it happened to work very well as the student teacher and I happened to work well together. How are teachers chosen? It is important to make sure they can work with another teacher. Even 14 years ago, some teachers did not know how they would cope with an SNA in the room. How would having a co-teacher and a few SNAs work when it comes to inspection, for example? How will the experienced teacher be trained to co-teach?

I have heard anecdotal evidence that resource teaching hours are sometimes used as a timetable filler to have a teacher work a certain period of hours, rather than choosing the best teacher to do the resource teaching hours. Is that something that happens and how can the practice be tackled?

In respect of students who do not take Irish, there is an issue that presents after the junior certificate examinations. There are students with special educational needs and those for whom English is not their first language, as well as others who, for various reasons, have an exemption. At leaving certificate level Irish is taught every day. In some schools there are more students in a class who are not doing Irish. A school can end up with 32 to 34 17 year-olds who are exempt from the class. I do not think there is any guideline for dealing with this issue. It seems to be about classroom control where the teacher tries to keep the students quiet for 40 minutes. Could we tap into this resource to do something powerful to help students for whom English is not their first language or who have special educational needs? A lot of the time there are no SNAs assigned to that group.

I am curious about the numbers at level 2 and the provision of proper training and how the strike affected the position. Just before the strike started, I sat the level 2 examination in English and at that stage there were no guidelines for it. When I asked the question at the end of the day, I was only taught to level 3. I do not know what has happened since.

On the applied leaving certificate programme, I believe that for a lot of children with special educational needs, it is about getting them through the junior certificate examinations and then they opt to take the applied leaving certificate programme. Does it serve them well? The programme has been in place a long time without being reviewed. If one takes the level 2 or level 1 programme, as suggested, can one progress to the applied leaving certificate programme or will it stop a student from progressing beyond third year?