Mr. Jim Mulkerrins:

I will make three points, if I may. The first is a general point that I imagine reflects all of our views. The Department of Education and Skills accepts that while it has provision and policies for support in place, individual experiences may not necessarily reflect that. We are aware that individual experiences are less than satisfactory, and it makes it all the more important that we have opportunities to come to committees to hear about individual experiences. We also hear about such experiences through parliamentary questions and representations as well. We are very conscious of it, and it affords us an opportunity to try to modify our arrangements to make the individual experiences better.

On the second point, I read some of the presentations that were made at earlier meetings about special needs assistants, SNAs, the experiences of one particular person at primary, secondary and third level, and the drop-off in the service that person experienced at second level. I was somewhat surprised by that individual example, because if I recall the case correctly the drop-off occurred during leaving certificate year. I was surprised to hear that because we operate a policy, between ourselves and the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, that when an SNA allocation is reviewed, unless there was absolute clarity that the individual need had diminished substantially, there would be no removal of that level of support in the final year. I suspect that was an individual example of something falling through the gaps.

I am not sure when this happened, but I would make the point that between 2001 and 2010, the number of SNAs in the system grew by approximately 1,000 every year. There was a period of cooling off between 2010 and 2013, largely because of the economic downturn, I suspect. However, we continued to make additional provision. By the end of this year there will be 15,000 SNAs in the system. A person attending school ten years ago may not have had the same level of access to SNA support as one would get now. We recognise that the levels of need have not changed greatly in the intervening years. The levels of assessed understanding of what those needs are has changed very substantially.

All of those needs existed in pupil populations ten, 20 and 30 years ago. We just were not supporting them the way we should have done, or in the way we now understand we needed to do.

Two points were raised about special schools, the first was about pathways to leaving certificate and applied leaving certificate. The committee knows that we have introduced levels 1 and 2 and there have been significant improvements in terms of accreditation for pupils. It is important that students' performance and abilities are recognised. In respect of the leaving certificate and applied leaving certificate there is a discussion between us and the National Council for Special Education which takes the lead in providing us with policy advice, having conducted research and consultation in the sector, about how we need to consider provision for special schools in the future. There is a discussion about getting the balance right. We recognise that there will always be children who will require the supports of special schools but who will have the capacity to go on and do leaving cert and applied leaving cert. That, unfortunately, is not the case for the majority. The issue is what the appropriate provision would be for pupils who are attending special schools but have aspirations to go on and do leaving cert applied and the ordinary leaving cert. It is a matter of getting the balance between where provision should be made, whether children should be provided with greater levels of access, even part-time, perhaps in the mainstream or access to a special class with transition to mainstream for appropriate subjects and whether the needs are such that they require special schools. That is a challenge we face and we hope to be able to improve our consideration of that over the coming year.