Ms Martina Mannion:

On behalf of the Department, we are delighted to be here and to have the opportunity to deal with the issues the committee would like raised. Deputy Tully covered a lot of issues there so, if it is okay with her, I will try to go through them one by one and then hand over to some of my colleagues, who will be able to give her a little more detail.

As regards inclusive education and painting the picture of what we see, the Deputy is correct in that the concerns of parents of children in special classes and special schools are legitimate. The Department fully recognises those concerns. We are very conscious that our special schools play an enormously valuable role in our education system. We value them hugely. We have opened seven new special schools, as the committee will know, in recent years. We are increasing the number of places in existing special schools. From the Department's perspective, we see an incredibly valuable and ongoing important role for our special schools in the education system. When we look at inclusive education, it is important to say that 97% of all our children are educated in mainstream settings with teachers and SNAs. We have almost 40,000 staff, between special education teachers and special needs assistants, supporting those children in our mainstream settings. We have increased significantly the number of special classes in our mainstream schools; we have almost 3,000. A special class involves teachers and SNAs working within a mainstream building. That can and should be a very inclusive environment. Our definition of success there is for the children to spend the maximum amount of time possible within the mainstream setting, acknowledging that they should obviously avail of the support of the special class as they need it. We would love to see children being able to access as much of the mainstream with their peers and their siblings as possible, acknowledging that that will not work for everybody. It is really important, in looking at a future vision, that we do not look to do away with the parts of the education system that work really well. Our special schools are central to that important work, and we want to make sure we support people. When we talk about a vision for the future, then, a longer-term plan, we acknowledge now the value in our school system of our mainstream and special classes and special schools. We are very much holding on to that.

As to what engagement there has been with parents and children, that initial work was undertaken by the NCSE. We have ongoing engagement with parents and young people. We have a new parent-and-learner unit within the Department that focuses on the voice of the child. We can talk to the committee a little about the groups we support, namely, advocacy and parents' groups with which we have established engagement in the Department. It is particularly important to flag to the committee that capturing the voice of everybody in the system on the value of education has been in our review of the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs, EPSEN, Act. As the committee will know, we commenced a review of that Act recently. It has been an incredibly positive experience. We have put a huge amount of work into capturing the voice of all the stakeholders in order that we are talking about people currently in the system - staff and children - and children who have left the system. We had over 28,000 responses to our online consultation. My colleague, Mr. Hanlon, can talk a little more about that. That really ensures we capture the voice of children and young people.

As regards our staff training and ensuring that staff in schools are very much aware of the need to support children and young people with disabilities, particularly autism, my colleague, Ms Fannin, might talk a little about our initial teacher training and then the supports the NCSE and our continuing professional development, CPD, teams have in that regard.

We are very conscious that the prevalence of autism is growing significantly. As regards our forward-planning provision, we had initially been working off a figure of 1.8% from the Department of Health back in 2018 and 2019. We see that there are significantly greater figures internationally. In our forward-planning processes, about which I know we have talked to the committee a little previously, on ensuring we have enough special school class provision, we are working off much higher percentages to ensure we have enough special schools and classes. We have had enough special schools and classes in recent years to meet the need.

As regards the assessments, we are very conscious that the children who are in our special schools and special classes have complex need. We want to ensure that the children who access those classes are the children with the most complex need. We acknowledge that there is an importance in their having access to assessments from the HSE. Their needs are greater than education; they need speech-and-language and occupational therapy and respite. We are looking internally at what we can do to move away from the assessment. We have moved away from assessments for all our mainstream provision, so the only component that still requires an assessment is our special schools and classes. We are looking at better ways to support transitions for people who already have assessments and at alternative ways to get in. We can talk to the committee a little about our school inclusion model as to how it can be rolled out.

Conscious of the time, however, I might first ask Mr. Hanlon to give us a quick update on the EPSEN Act. Then Ms Fannin might talk about the initial teacher training and Mr. Doody might give the committee a quick update on same, if that is all right.