Ms Orla Hanahoe:

I was asked quite a few questions and I am trying to recall all of them.

It comes down to resources. To put the matter in context for the committee, my school is in one of the most marginalised communities in the country. It is a tough place and we face really complex issues every day. Number one is class size. I am in the senior school where the pupil-teacher ratio is 24:1. In the more middle-class school down the road and every other school it is 26:1. That is not much of an advantage. There should be a smaller class size. I am working on an initiative with a group of DEIS school principals to have a maximum class size in the most disadvantaged schools of 15:1 in junior schools and 20:1 in senior schools. In our school, if we had smaller classes, we would have more time for relationships. A lot of this stems from relationships and the connection a child can have with the teacher. Where there are a lot of children with complex needs in the class, we definitely need a smaller class size.

Staffing is a significant issue. There is a crisis in teaching. This year I have been unable to fill one post. I have had about five teachers in the post all year because we cannot get teachers. I am sure the issue has been reported on by the Irish National Teachers Organisation, INTO, and so on. I have been using student teachers. I might find a teacher for one month here or there and I am having to split classes. Deputy Catherine Martin asked how I decided which teacher should teach each class. I am lucky in that it is a small enough school of 170 kids. Therefore, I know the kids and the teachers. It is about matching personalities and judging who will work well with whom and be the most experienced teacher to teach the most challenging class. However, we are struggling to find staff. I have two temporary and two permanent posts vacant. My advertisement has been up for one week and I have only received ten applicants for the temporary posts. It is the last day of advertising for the permanent posts and nobody wants them. Teachers are not choosing to work in schools like mine. It is a challenge and I want the best teachers to teach the children. Once we get teachers into a DEIS school, although they might be afraid, they generally love it and stay because they get such satisfaction from dealing with the children and seeing them progress. The Department is probably aware of it, but there is a teacher recruitment crisis. There is not a great choice.

Another issue is the waiting lists for child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, and speech and language therapy.

Many behavioural difficulties stem from speech and language difficulties and the waiting list is about eight months. If the parent does engage, he or she might get a block of therapy and must then wait for another six months. There are long waiting lists for occupational therapy. When we get to work with the occupational therapist, we realise what helps a child with ASD. One child who loves pressure wears his coat half the day and likes to carry piles of books around. We find out what works for him. We need a multidisciplinary approach. In an ideal world, I would love to have access such as a hub with a psychologist, occupational therapist, speech and language therapist and clinical psychologist working to serve disadvantaged schools in particular and serving in the schools because it involves the capacity of the parents as well. Sometimes they do not have the capacity to attend appointments so we experience missed appointments. I use my home school liaison officer with many of these children whereby she would have picked up the mother, driven her to the appointment, waited for her and held her hand. Getting therapy is a significant process in itself.

What we find beneficial in our schools is access to a counsellor. We get a counselling grant from Tusla and have a counsellor who comes to our school two days per week. That has helped a lot of our children with emotional and behavioural difficulties because they have somebody with whom to talk things through and help them with bereavements and tragedies they face.

It is all about early intervention because by the time a child gets to secondary school, it is very hard to pull him or her back. I know what the secondary school in our area faces. There is open drug dealing during the day and children are going into that secondary school on drugs. I have come across children in sixth class who were taking drugs as well, so it is a significant social issue in our area. It is not a simple process.

We would never have an SNA working alone with a child. A team is generally involved. We would need to have two adults with some children at all times. These children would be very difficult. They would be in and out of the classroom with the SNA. The SNA might see that they are getting a bit fidgety and difficult and bring them out, do a job or go to another room but it would be in the classroom. We have no special rooms. In-class suspension is something we do to avoid suspending children. It involves children spending time out of their own classrooms with another teacher. That sometimes helps because they want to get back to their own class. It keeps them in school and learning and engaged. It makes them want to be with their peers so that is a strategy we have found to be very beneficial.

Is there anything anybody wants to ask me about? I feel that our school is struggling. There are so many issues to face. It involves the complex issues of our particular area. There are DEIS band 1 schools but then one has what we call DEIS plus schools that need even more resources than the more privileged or middle-class schools. That needs to be taken into account. I am sure members will have found that it involves very disadvantaged communities so they need to be targeted first and need to get more resources than the rest of the schools.