Dr. Deirbhile Nic Craith:

I will respond to a couple of issues that were raised although some others related more to the post-primary educational system and I am not qualified to respond to those. The transition between primary and post-primary schools is a key area. It was particularly evident where there are children who do not have a strong tradition of continuing and pursuing education. There are some excellent projects on the ground but what we need is more co-ordination at national level. Work is being done in that area at the policy level to support schools with the transition.

Regarding the workload of educational welfare officers, schools have experienced a lack of personnel during the recession. When people retired, left or were on maternity leave, they were not replaced. That left gaps in the system. That probably created a workload for other educational welfare officers but it also created a gap from a schools perspective of not having someone in the area. That also applied to some of the other professional services on which schools rely such as NEPS, where there were no psychologists in an area or whether they were on maternity leave or long-term absence and were not replaced. That is a system issue that needs to be addressed in respect of how we continue with supports services that are required by schools for their pupils.

We have been waiting for some time for guidelines or a revised circular from the Department of Education and Skills on the whole area of the exemption from Irish. There is need for new up-to-date guidelines which reflect the current educational context in schools. That is another lacuna in our system that needs to be looked at.

Teacher absences is a great issue. The system issue is one of how we provide substitute teachers for teacher absences. The INTO supports the idea of returning to the supply panels approach in which one has a cohort of teachers available for substitute cover and that should also apply to the special schools. There should be teachers available for the regular substitute cover to fill in for teacher absences.

The inclusion support services, as I called it, has huge potential to be an excellent support service for schools, teachers and pupils. It is only just emerging. It has brought together three existing services and there are many issues to be resolved regarding how to capitalise on the advantage those three support services had, how they are brought together, continuing with the support but also having additional expert specialist teachers coming into the support services, particularly in the area of autism where there has been a gap and where teachers require additional support. There is potential there.

Another issue which must be dealt with at a system level is how to provide what we call the health or therapy related services for schools. The current system lacks consistency in that it varies depending on which part of the country someone lives in and what they can access. There have been pilot projects which worked very well, such as a pilot project in Tallaght on a school-based speech and language therapy service. The difficulty is they are often funded by philanthropic funding that may only be available for a short term but to sustain funding, it needs to come under the wing of the Department of Education and Skills or perhaps the NCSE might have a role in the future provision of the therapy services. From a schools perspective it is important that they are available when the children need them. At present, there are huge gaps and inconsistencies in those support services.