Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I am replying to this Topical Issue debate on behalf of the Minister of State with responsibility for special education and inclusion who could not be here this evening. It provides an opportunity to outline the current position regarding the recent changes to the assessment of need process and on the roles and responsibilities of the National Council for Special Education and schools. The AON process is provided for under the Disability Act 2005. Assessment officers under the remit of the HSE are charged with organising the assessment of need. The assessment officer makes the determination as to whether or not a child or young person meets the definition of disability contained in the Act. The assessment officer co-ordinates and completes the assessment report.

As referred to by Deputy Ó Laoghaire, since a court ruling in October 2021, there is now a legal obligation on the education system to assist the HSE as part of the HSE's assessment of need process.

The Department of Education and NCSE have worked intensively to ensure the process put in place adheres to legal obligations arising from the HSE's AON process, and is one that is rooted in existing good practice in schools. Under the Disability Act 2005, the NCSE is obliged to nominate a person with appropriate expertise to assist in the education assessment process. Where the child is enrolled in a school the Education of Persons with Special Education Needs Act 2004 names the principal as the person the NCSE should contact. Identification of education needs is central to the way schools provide for the inclusion and participation of all students and to providing an education which is appropriate to a student's abilities and needs.

In that regard, it is important to note that schools routinely identify students' needs. This aligns with the obligations on schools arising from the Education Act 1998. They use a range of assessment practices as part of the continuum of support process. This is a problem-solving model of assessment and intervention that enables schools to gather and analyse data about each individual pupil's education needs, as well as for planning and review of the progress of individual pupils. The continuum of support framework enables the school to identify, address and review progress in meeting the academic, social and emotional needs of the pupil, as well as the physical, sensory, language and communication needs.

Schools have been provided with a range of resources to ensure that the education needs of all students, including those with a disability or other additional education needs, are identified and supported. The Department of Education issued guidelines for primary and post-primary schools on how they should identify and provide for the special education and learning needs of students in 2017.

Information derived from the school's assessments in education are recorded in a student support file. In line with best educational practice, the student support file details a student's education needs, as identified by the school. The information contained in the student support file is used in completing the educational component of the assessment of need form which is returned to the HSE via the NCSE.

The Department of Education and the NCSE are conscious of the workload on schools and on school leaders and, in that regard, an extensive consultation process on the educational component of the assessment of need process was undertaken prior to its introduction. This process involved schools, advocacy groups, management bodies and unions. The Department of Education and the NCSE worked with a small number of schools on a draft of the documents required as part of the HSE's assessment of need process. The schools provided valuable feedback on the form and guidance documents which was used to inform the documents that have been issued to schools.

The Department of Education and the NCSE have put in place a suite of supports to assist schools in completing the educational component of the process.

Based on numbers supplied by the HSE, it is not expected that individual schools will have to comply with large numbers of individual requests but if this happens, and I can give a guarantee to the Deputy in the House, the dedicated NCSE resource team will work closely with the relevant schools concerned to facilitate the process.

See this speech in context