Mr. Ivica Milicevic:

I will respond to one or two questions posed earlier.

In relation to SOLAS as an employer, the percentage of people with disabilities working in the organisation declaring disabilities was 8% in 2021 and 7% in 2022.

In relation to culture, there was a question about promoting a positive culture, one that is positive for all learners with disabilities. As we outlined earlier, we are providing indirect supports in this regard. We are supporting practitioners who, in turn, provide learners with various supports and are able to relate to them better. For example, to date, 3,211 practitioners across the education sector have been trained and obtained UDL digital badges. As we mentioned earlier, we are rolling out this approach beyond the classroom so that people working in libraries and anybody interacting with learners will be trained in the UDL principles and approach.

There was also the question about complaints. These channels are open to learners. They can voice their issues to SOLAS directly or to ETBs at local level. SOLAS also sponsors a learner voice mechanism, which is, effectively, feedback from all learners. These meet mostly in person, but we also had an online version of this during Covid. Basically, it is an opportunity for learners to tell us how FET is providing services. Generally, the feedback we get is overwhelmingly positive. Obviously, though, any issues might be picked up there as well. Our colleagues in the ETBs are working on developing learner charters. Some of them are more advanced than others, but this is another opportunity for learners to be able to access the services provided by ETBs to the best of their abilities. A number of channels, therefore, are open to learners and they are encouraged to provide their feedback.

Turning to the question about the share of services open to people with disabilities, in principle, and as we mentioned, we are aiming to mainstream as many services as possible. In principle, therefore, all services are open, but then we also have specific and special training provision for people with disabilities who get more targeted supports in the context of that particular provision. We aim, therefore, to mainstream and provide practitioners and learners with direct and indirect supports as appropriate. We are doing our best and our colleagues in FET are doing their best as well. I thank the committee.