Mr. Brendan Doody:

I am long enough in the Department to remember when we had 350 special needs assistants in our entire system and there was a feeling we might need 500. Next year, we will have 19,000 so there has been an enormous increase in the resource.

From the inspectorate's perspective, when we go into schools, what we want to see schools doing is applying the key principles underpinning the allocation model for special education resources. There are two principles that trump all others. The first is working towards meeting an identified need. We have moved away from labelling on the special education side of the house. Up to 2017, one needed to have a label to get any additional support or resource in a school. That was felt to be the wrong way to approach things. Therefore, the allocation model in 2017 changed completely to ensure that schools were given the resources based on a profile that would enable them to meet the needs of the children who most need support. It is about focusing on the identified need of the student.

The second requirement is key to all provision in school. The child with the greatest level of need should get the greatest level of support. That is the key principle underpinning the special education teacher allocation model. I should clarify that we are talking about children with special and additional needs. We are not just talking about children with a visual impairment or autism. The resource that is available to assist the school in meeting the broad range of needs but also the needs of children who have bobbed to the surface in terms of their needs and the presentation of those needs.

The Covid learning and support scheme, CLASS, is an additional measure put into the system. It recognises that at the moment, there are children who may not previously have needed additional support and may have been just fine in terms of their engagement with learning, teachers and their peers but who, arising from their experiences of Covid. require additional support. We have put considerable additional resources into the schools such that they can work towards meeting the needs of children who might not have previously needed those additional supports or where a higher level of need is evident.

The principles that underpin the set allocation underpin the class programme as well. All of the additional programmes we put out into the system over the past 18 months to assist students with additional needs have been underpinned by those key principles. It is based on autonomy and the Department recognising that schools are better placed than we are to provide help tailored to their own context and student body. We have provided the resource and support and put a significant amount of work into giving guidance in the form of documents to support teaching and learning for children with special educational needs and guidance for children who are most at risk of educational disadvantage. We have put specific guidance into the system for young people attending Youthreach settings. The same principles underpin all of those. A school or centre of education needs to have a mechanism in place that will readily identify those young people with the greatest level of need and the resource should follow that particular need.