Mr. Eamon Stack:

I thank the Chairman, Deputies and Senators for the invitation to attend the meeting. I would like to introduce my colleagues, Ms Teresa Griffin, CEO of the NCSE, and Ms Mary Byrne, head of special education at the NCSE. I intend to address three main areas: the reasons change is necessary, an outline of the proposal for a new allocation model, and the implementation process for the model.

The NCSE submitted a wide-ranging policy advice paper on special education to the Minister for Education and Skills in May 2013. One of the issues raised in that paper was our concern that the current schemes for allocating more than 11,000 learning support and resource teacher posts to schools were inequitable and that a different allocation model should be developed, one based on the profiled need of each school without the need for a diagnosis of disability. I accepted the Minister’s invitation to chair an NCSE working group to develop a proposal for a new model, taking account of factors that identify educational profiles of schools and the recording of outcomes for students with special educational needs.

The working group comprised people with a wide range of expertise and experience in special education, including parents, teachers, principals, inspectors, the Education Research Centre, ERC, and NCSE council members. The central focus of the group’s work was at all times on meeting the learning needs of students with special educational needs. We took great care to ensure the proposed new model was informed by national and international research findings. We are satisfied the model takes into account many complex factors identified by research as contributing to a school’s need for additional teaching support.

We also engaged in a widespread consultation process with the education partners. This involved more than 22 meetings. There was recognition of the complexity and sensitivity of the task as well as general consensus on the need for a more equitable model, one which included levels of achievement societal context and significant needs and which did not rely on a diagnosis of disability. The working group proposal was published last June.

There are good reasons the current allocation model should be changed. I will cite three such reasons. More than 5,000 learning support teachers are allocated to all primary and post-primary schools to help students with learning difficulties on the basis of the number of class teachers in the case of primary schools or the number of students in the case of post-primary schools. This means two schools with the same number of students enrolled will get the same level of learning support even though one school could have ten students who qualify for learning support and the other school could have 75 students. This is both unfair and inequitable.

More than 6,000 resource teachers support students with a diagnosis of disability. We know there can be long waiting lists for a formal professional diagnosis of disability. While on the waiting list, resource teaching support cannot be provided to a student's school. Some parents circumvent public waiting lists by paying large sums of money for private consultants to diagnose their children. We believe a child should not have to wait for additional teaching support because his or her parent cannot pay for diagnostic services. The current system can reinforce disadvantage because children from less well-off families have to wait longer for a diagnosis of disability and supports in school.

The third reason I cite for the need for change is that many professionals have told us they feel obliged under the current system to assess and label children with a disability, even when an assessment may not be indicated for health or social care reasons, to ensure a school gets additional resource teaching hours. We know these labels can stay with the child for life. We also know there is a spectrum of ability within every category of disability and the label, by itself, does not necessarily inform a child's teaching and learning needs. The professionals have told us this time could be better used to provide necessary professional treatment, intervention and therapeutic support for the child.

The NCSE believes that changing the system should not wait for the implementation of the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs, EPSEN, Act. The proposed new model recommends one scheme to allocate all 11,000 additional teachers to support the inclusion of all children with learning difficulties and special educational needs. Approximately 15% of these would be allocated to ensure every school has upfront resources to enable it to be an inclusive school and to support any early intervention and prevention programmes. The remaining 85% of teachers would be allocated in accordance with each school's educational profile. The educational profile would be based on the number of students with very complex special educational needs, the results of standardised tests in reading and mathematics, and the social context of each school. Under this new model, there would no longer be a distinction between learning support and resource teachers. They would instead all be known as support teachers.

The working group also proposed that existing support services for students with special educational needs should be combined into one unified inclusion support service for schools. The working group is confident its proposed model is a better and more equitable way of delivering teaching resources for students with special educational needs.

The implementation of the proposed new model would bring real benefits to students, their families and schools. For example, students would no longer have to wait for a professional diagnosis of disability before being provided with additional teaching support in schools. They would no longer have to be labelled. The new model is breaking the link between the need for diagnosis and the allocation of teaching resources. Parents would no longer have to pay for private consultants and schools would have greater certainty about their teacher staffing levels which would enable them to plan for appropriate further training where necessary.

We have advised the Department of Education and Skills to consult further with parents, teachers, and other education partners to ensure their views are taken into account. The Department is currently engaged in a further consultation process with the education partners and has set about collecting information necessary to examine the feasibility of the proposed model.

Our proposals are in keeping with many of the proposals in the recently published Better Outcomes Brighter Futures: the National Policy Framework for Children and Young People 2014-2020. I thank the Chairman.