Ms Niamh Bakker:

Section 3 relates to students' views on services and IT in schools. I will first discuss levels of satisfaction for support services in schools which looks at matters such as the availability of career guidance, the availability and quality of counselling services and mental health supports and the amount and quality of learning support services. Overall, boys are more satisfied than girls with support services in schools. However, only 41% of students are satisfied with the quality of counselling and mental health support.

On IT, we looked at IT facilities, teachers' ability to use IT in the classroom and whether IT helped students to learn. Some 88% of respondents think that IT in the classroom is not a waste of time, while 66% think IT helps them to learn. On the availability of these services, one student in County Dublin said: "We need more access to computers and online learning resources." This suggests that an increase in funding for IT and technology-based support in schools will make learning more enjoyable and more effective for students.

On behalf of all the students who took part in this survey, we hope that the committee will consider our findings when making any further decisions which directly affect us. I thank the committee for listening.