Ms Moira Leydon:

It is nice to be back here discussing a really serious issue. Ms Brady started us off on the right note when she prefaced her contribution with the phrase "right to education". That is an absolutely core element of our engagement with students with special and additional needs. I looked at the Down Syndrome Ireland website this morning and read the very pertinent point that we were one of the last countries to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We have considerable ground to make up. We can all, however, justifiably say that inclusion is one of the success stories in Irish education. Over 90% of young people with special educational needs are in mainstream schools. That is phenomenal and is a testament to teachers, parents, legislators and Ministers for Education over the decades.

One of the challenging aspects of special educational needs in our system is that the definition in our legislation means that there is a very high prevalence, estimated between 20% and 25%. This is a systemic challenge. How does a school system provide additional resources and supports for almost a quarter of the student cohort at any given time?

Second, the system change to support this inclusion process has been significant. The recent school admissions legislation will make sure that every school and every sector of education plays by the same rules. There has been curriculum change for level 1 and 2 programmes, which is a huge development on what we have had in the past. It is really significant that, with departmental recommendations and system research, we have seen that the withdrawal method, taking students out of mainstream classes, is not the best way forward. The best way is for students to be in the mainstream with the additional supports, with teacher differentiation, etc.

We are here because we have a problem. As Ms Brady said, the second level teacher unions have reached an almost critical point in what our members tell us about our capacity to implement the new model whereby classroom teachers are required to engage in extensive planning for individual pupils. I must put on record that there is absolutely no objection to planning for students with special educational needs. Students have a right to education and schools and teachers must make sure that right is vindicated. However, the teacher unions at second level are saying that they do not have the training or the dedicated time and at the moment they do not have clear enough guidance. One of the challenging issues for second level schools, which are very complex institutions, is that there is no dedicated co-ordination time to co-ordinate not just the liaison between teachers around planning but more significantly the liaison between teachers and the external agencies, particularly for students who have more profound needs. These are the classics of investment in education.

Teachers need time, which means less teaching time and more time for planning. That requires investment. We need training and we also need better communication strategies from the Department with the school system. The co-ordination time is problematic for us. The Department issued a circular which states that to make sure that resources are used for teaching purposes, co-ordination time should be kept to a minimum. We find that particularly challenging because in complex institutions such as schools with between 700 and 1,000 pupils, dedicated planning time is needed.