Mr. Brendan Doody:

I note that while there is a guideline which suggests that there should be planning for all students, it is very rare that we come across situations in schools where children with special educational needs do not have that level of individual planning available to them. We conducted a fairly comprehensive review of provision for children with autism in special classes in 2019 and published a report last year and, for the most part, the quality of planning for individual children was found to be fairly good. There were some instances where it was not to the required standard and that would have been addressed at the level of the individual school. Overwhelmingly, however, the supports that were in place included a good level of planning for the students.

As members may know, there is a union directive, at post-primary level in particular, that IEPs would not be put in place for students but we are finding that is not the case in practice.

The support file that is supposed to be made available for students, as indicated in the guidelines, is actually in place.