Dr. Joanne Banks:

I thank the Deputy for his question. I will take the last one first if that is okay. Universal design for learning is mentioned in the recently-published NCSE document and it has gained huge momentum over the past five years, especially since Covid. There is huge interest among teachers in coming up to speed with how to implement it. It is an inclusive pedagogy. It is not specifically aimed at students with disabilities per se. It is supposed to include every learner by providing more flexible supports and ways of teaching, increasing the level of student autonomy and how they engage and interact with the curriculum. As we know, the curriculum is often quite fixed, so for students with differing levels of needs and abilities it allows them to access it coming from the perspective of where they are at. When we work in a system that has a high-stakes examination at the end of it, innovative pedagogies like UDL are really important to give the students the skills of how to learn, rather than the what, or the rote-learning model we adopted in the past.

Before I move on, it is important that at a committee like this we look to what is going on in other sectors. In the tertiary education sector at the moment, a charter for universal design is being developed and it will be launched in the next couple of weeks. Sectors like primary, secondary and early years could really benefit from this. This is a charter that tertiary education, that is, ETBs and universities, would adopt. They would then commit to implementing a universally-designed framework across pillars such as the digital environment, the physical environment and the teaching and learning space. It applies equally to student supports and the therapies and supports we have spoken about here. It is a whole-institution or whole-school model where every learner is catered for, including learners with disabilities, learners with differing linguistic backgrounds, ethnicities and so on. Rather than responding in a slightly unsustainable and ad hoc way to students with differing levels of need, universal design is embedded in the system as the students enter it. I hope that has clarified matters.