Mr. Paul Byrne:

The other thing we found was that we had to remove all encryption from the laptops, because when the system is updated to another one the encryption messes it up completely. With regard to using assistive technology to help SEN students, one of the things we did was to try to form links outside the school. There is a dyslexia club every Tuesday which is run mainly by primary school teachers who come in voluntarily in the evenings. We provide the IT room and any classrooms they want. They use programmes such as Touch-type Read and Spell, which is fantastic. By doing that, we are building a link. The transition from primary to secondary has been mentioned. Many of the students who come from our feeder schools are already used to the school from coming in and out and they know that the school has an awareness of the needs of SEN students. It has done an awful lot for the students. It also assures parents that they are sending students to a school that is already prepared to help them. Even with all that, we still find that sometimes a student slips through the net and it is only when there is an assessment, mainly when they are looking for some sort of assistance for SEC exams, that something is identified.

On the funding for psychologists, that came about because we had two to three NEPS assessments per year for 600 students. We also identified that there were other students who definitely needed an assessment to prepare us to help them in their education. They were falling behind but did not have behavioural problems. We work on different strategies for behavioural problems with NBSS.

This is a priority, so we used our school support fund. We worked with the psychologist and found he had an outstanding input to make on the transition of students from primary to post-primary level. I listened to him speak a fortnight ago. Basically, he slated secondary schools. Ours is one of the schools that is running a transition programme and a settling-in programme. He asked now that we have those in place what are we doing about the transition of students from second level to third year. He asked how we were preparing the students for that jump as he said that is the next thing we need to examine. That is all part of progressive planning within a school. To put this in the context of the our submission, all that is dependent on good leadership in a school. It is also dependent on the leaders having the time to do this, and their time not being taken up dealing with trivial matters that should have been dealt with, and traditionally were dealt with by middle management. The problem is that middle management has been eroded to the point where principals and deputy principals are acting as year heads, with some of them looking after book schemes, because they do not have the necessary middle management structures in place to do that. To progress the way special educational needs are looked after in schools, the middle management structures need to be put back in place. That is one of the elements we are seeking.

Senator Craughwell asked about the co-ordination of the special educational needs provision within the school and issue of continual professional development, CPD. We have incentivised teachers to do CPD training. We had a fund in place from the board of management for any teacher who undertook CPD training. If it was one teacher, he or she would get a maximum of €1,500 towards whatever course he or she was pursing. If there were five teachers, the maximum we would pay out was €300 and the money was divided on a pro rata basis. It encouraged five of our staff to engage in high quality CDP training. One of them zoned in on special educational needs area and on completing his training he has given back 100 fold what we gave him towards he doing his CPD training. He has put a structure in place.

Reference was made to creative timetabling. My view on timetabling is that we would use the timetable to the best effect for the students we have, to best use our resources to get the best outcomes for the students. In terms of timetabling in the school in which I work, I have provided that every teacher works to the maximum of 22 hours and every teacher has involvement with special educational needs. That is why the programme is successful. It is a major job to do that and keep it rolling over every six-week period. Sometimes issues arise in certain subject areas where a student suddenly finds that they are struggling. If we deal with that quickly and give them the help they need, six weeks is all it may take for that student to be able to keep up. We use team teaching a great deal. The value of team teaching is very high.