Mr. Adam Harris:

It is a great question. One of the problems we see in our day-to-day work, although the Ombudsman might be better placed to comment on this than anyone else, is that there seems to be a total deficit of responsibility built into our education system where the Department blames another group or another group blames the Department. The only stakeholder who does not seem to have a central voice or a relevance is the child.

One of the things that really worries me, and we see it every day in our work, is that often children must experience egregious breaches of their rights within the education system before they can be reconciled. Sometimes an issue arises and it is brought to the attention of the Department but it will not touch it. As a result, people are left for more than a year on their educational journey with a clear breach of their rights because of the current system, which does not favour the child.

We very much need reform but legislation only ever gets so far. The big word I would use here is “confidence”. We will not be able to create an inclusive system until parents and families have confidence in it. That has been blocked by two issues. First, there was a promise around the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004 which was not delivered on. Second, most recently during the Covid-19 pandemic, families were sent a clear message that if they chose to send their children to mainstream school, their rights would not be guaranteed in the same way those rights would be guaranteed for those in special schools and classes when it came to reopening. That is not without consequence.