Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

I look forward to working with everybody on the committee in the years ahead. I thank the committee for the invitation to attend it to discuss a broad range of matters that are being advanced by my Department to meet challenges and support the delivery of a world-class education system, one that breaks down barriers and, more importantly, ensures every child has the opportunity to achieve his or her full potential. An education system that wraps around all children and young people in every community is essential if we are to achieve the goal. I want the outcome of my time as Minister for Education and Youth to be greater equity and excellence in education for all children and young people. I look forward to working with all my colleagues in that regard.

In the area of special education, I want to support as many children with additional needs in mainstream provision as possible. It is also important to understand that there continues to be a strong and growing need to provide further special classes and special school places for children with more complex needs - in other words, make sure every child has access to the place that is most appropriate for him or her.

In mainstream schools by September 2025, there will be more than 3,700 special classes supporting more than 21,000 children. This is a doubling of the classes in the past five years. Some 400 new special classes will open in the coming September. The Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan, and I have asked the Department and the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, to bring forward all timelines for the 2026-27 school year to ensure better planning for parents and that children are accepted into new special classes at a much earlier point. This will ensure that the majority of new special classes for the next school term are confirmed a number of months ahead of the timeline this year. The key new measures to achieve this are, first, setting out a clear aim for the NCSE to sanction the majority of new special classes for the 2026-27 school year by 31 December 2025 and providing an indicative timeline for schools on how this could be achieved. The second is a requirement for the NCSE to be notified by 1 October 2025 by those parents seeking a special class or special school placement for a child or young person in September 2026, bringing the timeline forward by four months compared to this year.

At post-primary level in particular, we intend that large schools will grow to four special classes each. In 2025, we focused on those primary schools with eight classrooms or more with no special classes and we have secured agreement from many of them to open classes for this year. This was important so that all schools in an area supported children with special educational needs.

In terms of therapeutic supports for children, the programme for Government includes a commitment to introduce a national therapy service, NTS, in education, commencing in special schools and subsequently extending to schools with special classes and mainstream provision. This service will be delivered by the NCSE, building on its previously completed work on the school inclusion model, SIM, and, more recently, the educational therapy support service, ETSS.

In terms of educational disadvantage and social inclusion, my Department has developed a number of universal and targeted measures that support attendance and provide valuable resources to schools to help support children and young people at risk of poor attendance. These measures are included in the delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS, programme, education initiatives in Dublin's north-east inner city, and a summer programme for students with complex special educational needs and those at risk of educational disadvantage. I am committed to ensuring that the necessary resources are in place to support and retain children and young people in school to completion of the leaving certificate so that they can reach their full potential.

The DEIS programme aims to address concentrated educational disadvantage at school level. The gap in retention rates between DEIS and non-DEIS schools halved from 16.8% to 8.4% since the programme began, but I want to do more in that regard. All DEIS urban primary schools and all DEIS post-primary schools are included in the home school community liaison scheme, which currently serves 687 DEIS schools, catering for approximately 207,000 children and young people. As Minister, I am determined to further close the performance gap between DEIS and non-DEIS schools and introduce more innovative solutions to tackle disadvantage and make sure that we can act in a more targeted way to reach children who are not in a DEIS school. I will publish a new DEIS plan in 2025 and set out the actions I will take to further tackle educational disadvantage. This will include the development of a new DEIS+ scheme to target those schools with the very highest levels of disadvantage. That is a priority for me.

In my first speech in the Dáil as education Minister, I outlined for the House the huge and unacceptable increase in absenteeism in schools since the Covid-19 pandemic. The increase is more stark in DEIS schools, with more than 40% of students now missing more than 20 days of school each year. This is a hugely alarming trend. I have already outlined a number of measures to try to tackle this trend, including through an amendment to the Education (Welfare) Act 2000, to strengthen statutory supports for young children. This would bring children under the age of six, who are currently not included, who attend primary school within its scope to ensure earlier intervention. Other actions include expanding the capacity of the Educational Welfare Service and the school completion programme. The new DEIS plan will be aligned with these measures.

The Government has also recognised that the cost of preparing children for school can be a significant barrier to the participation of children and young people in education. I am pleased to say that, from the start of the 2025-26 school year, for the first time ever, all children and young people enrolled in primary, special and post-primary schools in the free education scheme will be provided with schoolbooks and core classroom resources.

School transport is a service much valued by families. By providing a safe and reliable service to their nearest school of eligibility, it ensures that children living in rural and remote areas are not disadvantaged by distance. More than 173,000 pupils benefit from the scheme each day, making it a core component of equitable school access nationwide. There is a very clear commitment to expand the service further.

It is also important for families to have choice for the model and ethos of school their children attend. There are 172 primary schools with a multidenominational or interdenominational ethos.

This includes 32 multidenominational primary schools operating where previously there was denominational provision only. The programme for Government commits to seeking to increase choice for parents by ensuring that families can access multidenominational, non-denominational and faith-based education. To help achieve this, my Department will launch a survey of primary school communities shortly.

Regarding teacher retention, Government is fully committed to ensuring that every child has a positive school experience, with access to qualified and engaged teachers who are dedicated to supporting their learning. This is, of course, a priority for all of us. There are more qualified teachers than ever working in the education system. Between 2018-19 and the most recent school year of 2023-24, there was record investment by Government. The number of teaching posts has increased by 10,408, with an additional 5,339 primary and 5,069 post-primary posts. Measures introduced have led to a 20% increase in the number of student teachers graduating between 2018 and 2023 and an increase of more than 30% in the number of teachers registered with the Teaching Council. I was delighted to announce that I will introduce earlier permanent contracts for teachers and will outline further measures in the coming weeks and months to further increase teacher supply.

On the schools building programme, the Department of Education and Youth has a strong track record of delivery, underpinned by a robust forward planning process. The provision of required school places, particularly for children with special educational needs, is an absolute priority. The Department is delivering a record level of investment in school buildings. Since 2020 alone, more than €6 billion has been invested in schools throughout the country, involving the completion of more than 1,375 school building projects.

To conclude, in the programme for Government, we have given a clear commitment to hold a convention on education, bringing together all the education stakeholders. This was done 30 years ago, and many of the actions that came from that laid the foundations for the agencies and structures in the school system now, and they have stood the test of time. As Minister for Education and Youth, I want to make sure that, by bringing together all of our partners once again, I can set out a vision for our education system in the years ahead.

I welcome the opportunity to speak to everybody here today and look forward to hearing their comments.