Ms Lorraine Dempsey:

With the permission of the Chair, I will respond. We would not have confidence that is possible right now. If we consider some of the systems the Department of Education has brought in to try to meet the needs of children with special educational needs in mainstream settings, that is, the special educational teacher allocation model and the upcoming special needs assistant, SNA, allocation model which will be based on the same data the Department will be collating on schools, there are already issues with the special educational teaching allocation model. Both Mr. Adam Harris and myself sat on a working group which designed the school inclusion model and the proposed components of that, of which only one was the SNA allocation model that the Department wants to roll out. We took that work as a wholesale piece of scaffolding supports around a school. That was the psychological support, nursing supports which Dr. Muldoon mentioned and providing an accurate level of special education teachers to support children in mainstream settings.

Currently, schools and patron bodies are raising issues, particularly around developing schools that year on year, have additional classes coming in but do not have children leaving. They are growing schools yet they are now expected to deliver special educational teaching supports, and potentially SNA supports, on the basis of data they submitted a couple of years ago when they did not have the additional pupils in the school. Without rectifying the current issues around how the Department allocates resources to schools, we are very concerned that it would be able to plan accurately for the needs of children as we move forward.