Ms Catherine Kelly:

On behalf of WALK, I thank the Chairperson and the members of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters for the opportunity for Gavin Gilvarry, a gentleman with lived experience of disability who overcomes daily barriers to achieve tremendous personal outcomes, which he will discuss with the committee later in his presentation, and me to present on the key issue of education. I acknowledge and thank especially Senator Seery Kearney, a member of the committee, for the tremendous support she continually provides to WALK.

By way of a brief introduction to WALK, we are a progressive community and voluntary section 39 organisation that has been supporting people with intellectual disabilities and autism for more than 50 years. We are based in Dublin and Louth and, as for education, we have developed and continue to deliver the innovative Providing Equal Employment Routes, PEER, programme. The programme supports students with special educational needs to transition from special school to mainstream further education, training and employment. The services and supports WALK provides are rights based and rooted in the belief that all people have the right to live self-determined lives in an equal and inclusive society.

In our engagement with the committee today we will focus on the topic of education. We ask the committee to consider a more holistic and integrated approach to the achievement of equality in education. If we are to make schools truly egalitarian institutions, we must consider the inclusive process for respecting differences not only in the culture of education but also in the curriculum, the pedagogy and the assessment systems that typically exclude people with intellectual disabilities from progressing on their pathway to lifelong learning. Education has a significant impact on all our lives, and being educated opens doors for us. Schools and colleges are major institutions of selection and stratification for the labour market. Many people with an intellectual disability, however, leave school never having attained a QQI level 3, 4 or 5 standard of education. This prompts us to ask what measures are in place to determine the standard of education a person with an intellectual disability receives. The answer is "None". It is perfectly acceptable for these people to leave school without any QQI qualification and transition into a life of services as opposed to a life in which they direct their own supports to achieve their educational, training and employment goals.

Some people whom WALK supports need additional accommodations to reach educational milestones. For example, we have worked with one individual who left school with no educational qualifications and limited literacy skills. He was, however, an extremely driven and capable individual who had not been given appropriate supports in school. He had a dream: he wanted to work with children. WALK supported him on his journey. The first thing we looked at was paid work experience for one hour per week to decide if this was really what he wanted to do with his life. It was, so he did a QQI level 3 course with support from a PEER mentor, which took him one year. He then did a QQI level 4 course with support from WALK staff, which took two years, while also taking up a part-time job in a restaurant to support himself. He then did a QQI level 5 course with support from WALK staff, which took him three years, while taking up a part-time job in a restaurant. Then he took on a community employment, CE, scheme of 19.5 hours per week in childcare and has now commenced his QQI level 6 childcare course with support. That is just one example of a very capable person who was let down very badly by the school educational system.

This raises two questions. Who is monitoring the quality standard of education for children with an intellectual disability, and how is it acceptable for a child to leave school with no educational qualification? We do not expect other children to leave school and commence a PhD immediately because we recognise that years of educational foundations are required before a person can reach that level of academic competence. We have an educational pathway designed for this journey.

Why have we not designed an educational pathway through school for children with intellectual disabilities? Would it not seem like the logical approach?

In our society, this inequality manifests itself as a problem of access, participation and outcome, arising from unequal distribution of resources, supports, accommodations, alternative learning options and, fundamentally, an institutionalised one-size-fits-all educational system. If a student selects the mainstream path after leaving school, there is a massive gap to bridge in trying to access appropriate further education, because they all start at QQI level 5. There is very little support to bridge the gap into the mainstream and, therefore, without a good educational foundation, children leave school with limited further education, training and career options. The Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004 states:

That people with [disabilities] shall have the same right to avail of, and benefit from, appropriate education ... to assist children with [disabilities] to leave school with the skills necessary to participate ... in an inclusive way in the social and economic activities of society and to live independent and fulfilled lives.

However, as already outlined, the lived experience of people with an intellectual disability is contrary to this.

There is no provision for career guidance in our special schools or comprehensive transition planning for our young citizens with special educational needs that begins early enough to have a meaningful and positive influence on a young person’s life choices and decisions. Therefore, the educational foundation required for progression into mainstream that should begin in schools only begins, for the lucky ones, when they are young adults.

Training settings such as the WALKways programme that operates in Tallaght University Hospital and the Oireachtas work learning, OWL, programme that operates here in Leinster House provide a real and applied learning experience to the trainees in a busy work setting, to support the development of skill acquisition required to access paid employment in the open labour market. Sadly, programmes such as this are extremely limited in Ireland.

The distribution of economic resources plays a pivotal role in determining the quality of education a person receives and because education is such a powerful determinant of life chances, equality in education cannot be thought of separately from economic equality. People with intellectual disabilities have a right to education. With a view to realising this right without discrimination and based on equal opportunity, States parties are tasked to ensure an inclusive education system at all levels and lifelong learning. I would like to introduce Gavin Gilvarry, who has kindly agreed to share his lived experience with us all here today.