Ms Anne Tansey:

It is not just a snapshot in time when it comes to exemptions. Years ago, it was a snapshot of how the child was getting on at a particular time. Schools are now looking at the child's response to intervention over time. We encourage schools to recognise that children may be struggling, to put interventions in place and monitor their outcomes and to try to ensure children are making progress. The level of need is measured by the child's response to intervention over time. There are many children receiving learning support in schools whose response to intervention over time has improved. They do better than when they received the support. There will still be a cohort of children who struggle and do not respond to interventions in the way a typical child might.

We have now embedded the idea of response to intervention into the system. It is important that we do not give an exemption to a child outside the context of having received learning support, with the use of evidence-based interventions over time. At the end of that process a child may still be really struggling. We would say that "struggling", which is being at or below the 10th percentile, is a measure of a child with moderate to severe level of difficulties.