Mr. Dharragh Hunt:

I would not have meant to convey that there has been too much of an expansion. There has been a very significant expansion. Maybe the point is to move away from seeing them as bricks and mortar, a unit on the site of a school. Often when a special class is opened, schools get whole-school training and the teachers and SNAs who are in the special class develop skills capacity. That expansion can be viewed as a very positive thing. There is now much more capacity in more schools to facilitate students with autism to attend. Looking at some of the negative things that are highlighted in the inspectorate's report and in research by the ESRI, in some schools where the children are in special classes, the level of integration outside that classroom is not what it should be. For children who may be placed in a special class quite young, there is an issue with whether that is reviewed. A child might be placed in a special class in junior infants or senior infants. We do not have a process, after three or four years, for reviewing to determined whether that child has progressed and whether he or she needs to be in a special class. There is not a system whereby that child can be moved out into the mainstream class. It does not always happen. There is an issue around placement and review.

Our view is that we should be moving to a more inclusive education system. We have to figure out what that means in an Irish context. We have a lot of small schools. Some countries that have moved further than us in this area have huge schools so it may be easier. We have to figure out what an inclusive education system means in our context. In any of the systems we are aware of, certain children are going to have to be withdrawn for part of the day for sensory reasons or because they need extra support. The question is how we get the right supports into schools to support children and how support can be given in a flexible way that is not either-or in respect of being in a special or mainstream class. It could be that a child would be in a special class for part of the day, or more in it this year and less next year. It should be less rigid.