Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are two very different things at issue here. On the one hand, where a school believes a child might need additional support or may have an additional need, it will talk to the HSE and the NCSE about how that child can be supported. Schools have a role undoubtedly in that and principals and teachers are well-placed to identify somebody who potentially may need additional support.

It is an entirely different thing but it is completely back-to-front for the NCSE to put the responsibility for filtering that onto the school. It is one thing to say that a child may need additional support but it is another thing entirely for the NCSE to be expecting the first part of this process in the assessment of educational needs to start with the school. It changes the relationship quite substantially. A school support plan is a working document which outlines a plan to ensure the child can progress. This changes the nature of that document completely because it can now potentially form part of a legal document under the Disability Act. If the school support plan is now being equated with part of an assessment of need, then what one has been doing with the school support plan, which is a live working document and an instrument of education, changes completely. I want to emphasise that this is putting teachers between a rock and a hard place because parents will be impressing on them the fact that there are needs. The teachers may not agree but the teachers are not educational psychologists. They may miss a child, or they may miss the needs of a child.

This is not terribly complicated when one boils it all down and when one looks at the documents. I have to say these are not the clearest documents but it is educational psychologists who should be doing this work. If there is an additional budget, as there is for the NCSE, why is it not being put to use for this?

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