Ms Derval McDonagh:

Thank you, Deputy. I will come in on the topic of suspensions. It is related to reduced school days as well. I have been looking at the information and data that are out there. This is something we need to take really seriously. The data shows that 65% to 66% of children on reduced school days are disabled. That tells us something about what is happening in the system, and that has risen year on year.

Unfortunately, there are no disaggregated national figures on suspensions of disabled children. We have general figures on suspensions but we do not know the level of issue. All we can do is put forward what is coming through from our advocacy work with children and families. We hear about these issues every day. I am glad to be sitting beside representatives of two schools who are speaking of inclusion and "Rights, not charity". We subscribe to the way of thinking that all children belong in their local schools. That will take a co-ordinated strategic plan for inclusive education, and at the forefront of that plan need to be the voices of children and their families. As our colleagues in the school system are telling us, teachers on the ground are also the experts in this.

We need to bring together stakeholders to co-design what that will look like so that, step by step, we make improvements in the system. Some of that is about bringing in more resources to the system, some of it is reimagining and rethinking how we use resources and some of it is building resources into the system that we have not thought of yet, such as using teaching assistants in schools and developing other learning supports in our school system.

We know this will not happen overnight but we need to see a documented, co-ordinated, cross-government-agreed plan to make these improvements year on year. Children cannot wait for that to happen. We understand research is being done in that space. There is an opportunity with the new convention on education for a public conversation over the next eighteen months about the future of our schools, imagining what all schools need to look like so that all children can belong. We need to listen to the experts on this: children, families and the people delivering the school system on the ground.