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

The position of the Department of Education and Skills is that a reduced timetable should not be used as a behavioural management technique or as a de facto suspension or expulsion. How has the Department checked? Is Ms Cregg telling me that the Department believes schools are only using reduced timetables in exceptional circumstances? Is the Department aware that Traveller representative groups have highlighted inappropriate use of reduced timetables? Is that the only source of the Department's awareness? It is shocking that the groups have had to bring that to the attention of the Department. Many others are suffering due to abuse of the reduced timetable option. When did the Department last communicate with schools to clarify the position that it should only arise in exceptional circumstances? How has the Department been checking that it is only being used in exceptional circumstances?

Tusla has outlined how guidance has been provided to schools to the effect that the exclusion of a student for part of the school day as a sanction or asking a parent to keep a child from school as a sanction amounts to a suspension. The Department maintains the measure cannot be used as a de facto suspension but yet guidance has been provided to schools that a reduced timetable amounts in fact to a suspension. Can the Department explain the position? Either it is happening or it is not. If it is, how many section 29 applications have been made? How many parents have appealed such moves? My fear is that parents are not being informed. I believe parents of the most vulnerable and of students from disadvantaged areas who are being subjected to reduced timetables are not aware of their rights. I believe they are unaware of how to challenge such a measure. What are we doing for parents to ensure they can advocate properly for the right of their children to education? What supports are in place to ensure that children are getting their right to education?

Does the Department check what happens when a parent disagrees? What if a parent disagrees but then the child is put out? What happens then? Are children being put on reduced timetables against the wishes of their parents? Why is the operation of reduced timetables in schools not included in whole-school evaluation of management, leadership and learning, WSE-MLL, inspections? I understand it is not because I asked the question two weeks ago. How easy would it be to add a question on this when an inspector comes for three or four days to a school? An inspector could ask whether a school operates a reduced timetable and ask for all the facts, including how the students go on the reduced timetable. The students and parents are surveyed as part of the WSE-MLL inspections. Why not add a question to those surveys? When inspectors meet the boards of management as part of the WSE-MLL process, are board members asked how many reduced timetables they have approved and why? Have inspectors formed the view that all the members of the board of management are okay with the measure? Are they simply going with the wishes of the principal? How well informed are board members on this?

What is the plan now? The Minister has said he is not happy with this but we need more than that. The Department has assured us it is working with Tusla with a view to ensuring that the use of reduced timetables is limited only to those exceptional circumstances where it is necessary. What does that mean? Can the Department break that down for me? What are we going to see? What is the plan? How is the Department going to address it and stop this practice? How is the Department going to support principals like Ms Hanahoe, who has spoken of a health and safety danger? Ms Hanahoe has outlined how there is danger with the behaviour that she is trying to manage in her school. That is unfair on students and principals and it is not safe. What is the Department putting in place? What is the greater plan? For violent and aggressive outbursts there has to be a better option than reduced timetables. I simply do not understand how the Department has been blind and deaf to all of this. It fell to us to shine this light. The best thing that has happened is that the light is being shone on this. Did it really take until June 2019 to shine a light on the use and misuse of reduced timetables? Did it take this long to shine the light on the dire need to resource our teachers, principals and schools to provide the education to which every child has a right?