Ms Caroline Quinn:

To go back to the July provision question, if we were to summarise it and look at what must be done, the first thing is we need the timeframe to be given to schools in a timely manner. It needs to be early in the school year and to be a very clear timeframe. Under that timeframe should be clear guidelines as to what the school is expected to do to prepare for each section. For example, one of my colleagues mentioned that some of the children in a special school may need to be PEG-fed. If they are doing the July provision, we cannot just have anybody doing that. Thus, the school leader needs to have the timeframe, know when he or she is to have the people in place, and all of those things. CPD may be needed because sometimes young teachers or teachers in the final years of the their training may join in, so there must be some kind of training.

One of the things we did not mention regarding the July provision is a board of management must satisfy itself about health and safety in the school. In many cases, the few weeks you have in the two summer months are the only time a board of management might have to do building work and so sometimes the health and safety impact of building work going on on the school affects the July provision as well.

If we really worked on this, you would find that there will be teams of people on staff who will become the July provision people, including both SNAs and teachers. Mr. Pike has already mentioned the issue with payment. The difference in payment is one element and the late payment is something that has been a huge issue for years.

One of the things that happened in the last year, which was very welcome in many schools, was that through discussion with the Department, a school could decide whether they would do the July provision, or summer provision as it is now called, in July or August. In our own case, last year we were taking in quite a few new children or children whose emerging needs had just been identified. We chose to have the programme in August because we felt we should take the children back a few weeks before they were due to come back and have them well settled in this big place they call school before it was necessary. This year we took a different decision and had it in July because we did not have the other need, so there are all sorts of areas where schools themselves can make local decisions but if the overall framework is there and is clear, then we would go a long way down the road to ensuring it happens in many more schools.