Mr. Ciarán Cronin:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members for inviting us to this meeting of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters. It is a privilege to be asked here today to take part in this conversation. My name is Ciarán Cronin and I am the principal of St. James's Primary School. Our school is a DEIS band 1 school situated between the Guinness brewery and St. James's Hospital in Dublin 8. We have 280 pupils, 16 mainstream classes and two special classes for children with autism. We have 31 teachers and 12 SNAs, and every day we welcome children of 41 different nationalities and 15 different religions. We also have 33 children experiencing homelessness or living in IPAS accommodation. Our school has the Early Focus project to help support the pupils' emotional needs and is a member of the Dublin 8 Liberties school completion programme.

As a principal, I am proud when I see amazing interactions between teachers, SNAs and students every day. I am always blown away by my dedicated staff's ability to always go the extra mile to support the students who need extra help in our school. Our school is such a happy place, and it is great to see so many smiling pupils come through our doors. It is an amazing environment where children can feel safe, happy and engaged in learning daily.

The main points I will talk about today are staffing, parental support, our two wonderful autism classes, appropriate school places, school transitions and how we have experienced these in our school. In our school, we provide special educational support to roughly 40% of the children in our care. This may include the special class for children with autism, support from a special education teacher, and support for children who are learning English as an additional language and children who are receiving support from an SNA. Sinéad Fowler, who is here with us, is the special educational needs co-ordinator for our school and every year she has the unenviable task of piecing together timetables for special education teachers and SNAs to try to share the loaves and fishes so every child entitled to support gets some. This is made even harder by the unpredictable enrolments that take place at the beginning of and throughout the school year.

As a DEIS school, and in the tradition of the Religious Sisters of Charity, we pride ourselves on our willingness to go the extra mile to help the parents and pupils of our school. The home school community liaison is a full-time position in our school whereby a teacher is seconded to a role within the school to support parents. Often, this will be to support parents who find different aspects of their child's education daunting. It does not get more daunting than trying to negotiate the children's disability network system or trying to get your child assessed through the assessment of need process.

So much of our time is spent supporting families to access these supports and fill in paperwork. Those who are not taken into account are the families with literacy issues, families who are homeless and living in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation, and families who do not have access to technology and who, for many reasons, may change their phone numbers up to two or three times per year. These families may wait up to four years on a waiting list to access supports for their children and then, due to the above reasons and others, may miss their appointments. Unfortunately, after missing a number of appointments, they will be discharged from the system and the school will be put under pressure to start the whole process again. A solution needs to be identified in this regard.

It is frustrating that people do not listen to schools. When schools and voices in education come together to ask for funding for certain things, we usually get a positive response. In the context of supporting students in our schools with special educational needs, however, it is not money we need but more people. We need more SNAs and teachers to support children with special educational needs. It is as simple as that. If we want to be serious about supporting the most vulnerable children in our schools and providing genuinely inclusive education, we need more SNAs. However, the most recent guidelines regarding the review of SNA allocations for this year, which were mentioned by Mr. O'Neill, have been met with despair among school leaders, who are concerned they will result in a reduction in SNAs and a subsequent impact on the education we can provide.

In our school we have two special classes for children with autism. They are two amazing, vibrant classes with dedicated teachers and SNAs and amazing children who come in every day with a smile. We could fill two more special classes with children from our mainstream classes but, like most schools, we are short on classrooms and appropriate spaces to turn into autism classes – "appropriate" being the key word here. It is frustrating to hear about schools being made to open special classes this year at the loss of rooms used as libraries, breakfast clubs and well-being rooms.

I am joined today by Ms Yvonne Kealy, one of our autism class teachers, who has been so dedicated to her class for the last number of years. However, every year, I have had to advertise to get a teacher to work in the other autism class. Currently, the majority of applicants for special class teaching positions are Spanish. I have had two Spanish women teach in our ASD classes and they have been incredible. However, due to Teaching Council restrictions, they cannot become long-term members of school staff despite their skills and expertise. How these roles are filled on a long-term basis needs to be looked at because many schools find themselves still recruiting special class teachers well into September each year. All children are entitled to attend their local primary school but principals too often find themselves having to tell parents realistically what supports they can and cannot put in place for their child.

Schools like ours have to look for private funding through our early focus project to enlist the help of occupational therapists and psychologists in upskilling staff to feel more confident in their abilities to support children of all needs in their class. More and more, we are seeing children who cannot sit in their seats, constantly fidget and squirm and require movement breaks to get out of their classroom and stretch their legs in order to meet their sensory needs. This is a huge issue in many schools, with staff becoming creative and setting up sensory corners with exercise bikes, yoga balls and mini-trampolines just to help children be able to go back into the classroom and concentrate. As with anything, this is dependent on having staff to do it.

One thing that frustrates me every year is children in our autism class who are moving from sixth class into secondary school. Most of the students in our school finish sixth class having visited their new school several times, but our special class students with autism do not know where they will be and often it takes a whole year to find an appropriate school place for them. The NCSE has put in place a 1 October deadline for notification of a child with autism who needs a school place. This requires an up-to-date psychological assessment stating they still require a place in a special class. That is another process that assumes their parents have good literacy skills and access to scanners and are computer literate. It is another potential barrier for vulnerable families who have enough on their plates.

I look forward to engaging with members in an open and honest discussion about what can be done to make schools genuinely inclusive. Thank you.