Ms Eileen Salmon:

We welcome the parent and student charter, but schools are already providing all that is envisaged in the charter. It is a positive move to develop guidelines to ensure that all schools are taking their responsibilities on board. Schools had a very positive experience of developing a code of behaviour following guidelines produced by the National Educational Welfare Board after a lot of consultation with all our partners several years ago.

We would hope that this is the format envisaged in developing guidelines around a parent and student charter. If, however, detailed procedures are being proposed for processing grievances and complaints, they need to be workable. The danger is that they could become very cumbersome. We strike a note of caution here. Schools already have procedures in place, as I mentioned in our previous submission, which are usually agreed, according to school type, with unions and parent bodies. We do not want schools taking on board a huge extra burden of time and costs for the development of a new, cumbersome policy.

We would like parental responsibilities to be mentioned in the charter. We suggested something along the lines of "Parents will co-operate with the Parent and Student Charter and recognise their responsibilities to be active and involved in their child’s education". Boards listening to student voices in very important for all stakeholders, but it is important to get the context right. Student councils can be very active in a school and the officers of the council can have important input into policies and procedures. There are, however, governance issues that need to be kept separate from student input around the areas of employment, discipline and finance.

It is a positive move to bring the role of the Ombudsman for Children to everyone's attention. We have had experience of the Ombudsman for Children intervening in board decisions in some of our schools and any investigations, findings and recommendations of the ombudsman are, to our knowledge, very seriously considered by our boards as it stands. That is why it is difficult to understand the need for another ombudsman, specifically an ombudsman for education. The purpose of the role as outlined would be to provide an appeal mechanism for the decisions of boards and teachers and for grievances against schools, but there are already existing mechanisms to fulfil these functions. We outlined these in our advance submission and they include the Department inspectorate for section 29 appeals relating to refusal to enrol or exclusion of students. Special education needs issues can be appealed to the NCSE, while the Teaching Council handles appeals regarding fitness to teach and parental complaints, if they get to that stage. Tusla and An Garda Síochána deal with child protection, and, as I have already said, the existing Ombudsman for Children has a very wide remit in respect of children, parents and others in an education setting.

The proposed sections 65(1)(a) to 65(1)(h) set out a range of functions for the ombudsman including development of education policy, encouraging the development of school policies promoting rights and welfare of children, promoting awareness, exchanging information with its international counterparts, monitoring of legislation and the hearing and determination of appeals. All policies are developed in the context of existing legislation. There are consultative processes at all stages of development between school management bodies, the Department and relevant agencies at the initial stage of proposed new policies. School management bodies and boards of management disseminate information and advice. School boards, school management, parents and students collaboratively draw up, agree and ratify policies and all policies are publicly available.

The proposed section 65(2) speaks of establishing consultation structures with boards and school management organisations and of consultation with the student voice. There is constant ongoing consultation between school management organisations, the Department and a wide range of agencies involved in the welfare and education of children. An active student voice is a feature of almost all schools, and it should be in all schools, not alone on policy development, but on a wide range of issues relating to the education of students in any school, as it is with the parent voice.

The proposed sections 66(1) to 66(7) outline appeal processes but, as already stated, there are a wide range of existing appeal processes in operation. The fear is that having an ombudsman for education would mean that a school could be involved in multiple appeals on the same issue over a long period of time. The capacity to manage this does not exist in schools, either in terms of human or financial resources, especially as legal advice and representation is becoming more and more common. It would appear that the proposed ombudsman for education may be a duplication of the roles and functions of existing structures. It would also have a cost implication not only in terms of establishing the office, but also for schools. Extra resources and supports would be required as schools do not have the capacity to further expand the role of voluntary boards of management. A more appropriate way of dealing with any gaps in the system would be to set up a working group, a forum of all the relevant parties, to examine what already exists and to see where the perceived gaps may be. It could also establish if the expansion of existing services would suffice to bridge these gaps, rather than setting up a complete new entity, which would be costly and possibly unnecessary.