Ms Toni O'Dwyer:

On the visiting teachers, I do not see a geographic disparity generally, unless there is a vacancy that takes a while to fill. The NCSE does not have a pool of trained teachers from which to fill vacancies so there can be delays. Visiting teachers are trained in the UK and are generally trained while they are operating. The interesting piece here is the comparative between us and the UK. The caseload of a visiting teacher here is approximately 100 while in the UK it is 50. There are ten times more visiting teachers in the UK than here. That service is still under significant pressure. The NCBI matches the visiting teacher service in terms of resources so us working together makes absolute sense.