Ms Teresa Griffin:

Much of our work is focused on producing policy advice for the Minister and the advice we gave was very clear about the centrality and importance of the role of the teacher. Our parental programme is being rolled out, but we are aware this area is very fraught. The SENOs are there in the middle of decision-making about when to allocate an SNA and when to phase out an SNA. We fully appreciate the anxiety of everybody involved, including schools, SNAs, children and parents. The SENOs try to explain their decisions to principals. We believe the number of appeals made to us reflects some level of success in terms of our ability to explain why changes and moves are made. In 22,000 application processes, we have had only 76 full appeals, because explanations for decisions have been provided.

We also have meetings with professionals and voluntary bodies. We try to go out to people with our consultation process to explain issues. It is important to point out that at this point in time, we could not recommend a specific teaching system model for children with special educational needs. However, we are keeping the matter under review. Trying to persuade parents to accept the loss of an SNA or an adjustment to hours or less support for their child, particularly when other supports are not available, is very difficult. This is a difficult concept for them. We are trying to meet and work with professional bodies and the HSE on this so that people do not just automatically tick a box and say a child needs additional teaching or SNA support. We want to encourage them to sit down to consider what they would expect an SNA to do for that child. It is only when they start thinking through that process and through the individual care and education plans that people realise it might be involve more of a pedagogical role than a care role.