Mr. Adam Harris:

I thank the Chair and committee members for the invitation to appear today. I wish to recognise the extensive engagement we had with senior officials in the Department of Education yesterday. While not a substitute for a timely consultation, the engagement was welcome. However, we continue to have significant concerns relating to the SET allocation model. As members may be aware, AsIAm is Ireland's autism charity. At least one in 27 children of schoolgoing age now an autism diagnosis.

A majority of our young people attend mainstream school, with significant numbers also enrolled in autism-specific classes or in special schools. While this may mean a shift in where our children learn compared to the past, it does not necessarily indicate a fundamental shift in terms of inclusion. Indeed, in our most recent Same Chance report, 23% of our community members reported that their child did not have a suitable school place which met his or her needs and 61% did not believe, based on experience, that our education system was inclusive or accessible. For many the battle to secure a school place is followed by an endless battle for supports and reasonable accommodations in the face of exclusionary practices and the constant threat of reduced timetable, placement breakdown, suspension or expulsion. Our learners do not enjoy the same chance as their neurotypical peers. We frequently hear the Department hailing the overall success of Ireland's education system and its performance internationally but this simply has no relevance to the experience of so many children in our community. Understanding this background and context is essential to understanding the sense of a breach of trust many families in our community feel by the Department of Education’s announcement that the current SET allocation model would change, removing complex needs as a relevant factor in the front-loading model, without any forewarning, engagement or consultation with those most affected. Our families have little reason to trust the system, least of all when it has attached zero weight in its model to the voices and experiences of our community.

The SET allocation model, as introduced in 2017, is based on NCSE policy advice. That policy advice was crystal clear that the number of children with what it describes as “complex needs” within a school should form a significant proportion of the allocation model but this was deviated from behind closed doors. This simply would not happen to teacher representative organisations or management body groups and it certainly should not happen to those for whom the Oireachtas voted these resources. It can never happen again and we would ask this committee to secure assurances from the Secretary General of the Department of Education on how disability stakeholders are consulted on every relevant issue and announcement in a timely manner into the future. The UNCRPD is clear that disabled voices must be at the heart of decision-making processes which affect our community. What has taken place is totally unacceptable. It has led to a communications crisis which has caused significant stress to families and appears to have contributed to a return to soft barriers, as families report schools telling them that they can no longer be assured of a place in September or of ongoing participation in mainstream education as a result.

It is for these serious reasons we have asked the Department to pause the SET allocation model for real consultation and to guarantee that no child who needs support will lose out. We are told a pause is not possible and that school-level data cannot be used. However, just a few weeks ago the Department was arguing the same data was acceptable for school staff to conduct a statutory educational assessment as part of the assessment of need process. We are told that the data the Department is receiving from the HSE will no longer allow for the use of the existing SET allocation framework and that there is no other way. That to us sounds like a case of asking children to conform to a broken system instead of creating an effective, child-centred approach into the future. This change comes at a time when emerging needs and identified complex support needs within our schools have never been greater and are predicted to continue to rise. While we acknowledge the Department is not removing resources from the system and has secured additional resources this year, increased investment is simply not keeping pace with need and that fundamental point needs to be acknowledged before we can even consider how resources are then allocated. At present the Department will say that schools have the resources to meet all needs within the school but schools will tell families that they do not have the resources they need to meet their child's needs. Our children are caught in the middle, with their needs not being met on their own merits or in terms of how they relate to the needs of others in their school. This is not a rights-based approach. We note that the historical data and weighting related to complex needs will now form part of the allocation model which relates to literacy and numeracy. However, we do not believe this will be sufficiently representative and have concerns that literacy and numeracy are not relevant predictors of learning needs for many autistic students with complex needs.

Finally, we urge the committee to closely examine the proposed exceptional review process which the Department is relying on to assure families that no child will go without. We are not satisfied that this process will be inclusive or timely but even more significantly, we are concerned it is an unbudgeted and uncosted appeals process. Nothing in our experience would lead us to believe that a child’s needs will be prioritised over budgetary constraints in a system which lacks transparency for families by creating a blame game between schools and the Department. Any allocation model which is to succeed must have a credible and wholly independent appeals process and must be accompanied by very strong safeguards to ensure the allocation reaches those who need it most. This must include a right not just for schools to appeal to their allocation but for parents to appeal the level of support provided to their child within the school.