Johnny Guirke (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Tully for bringing forward this Bill. The EPSEN Act was passed in 2004 to ensure that children with additional education needs could be educated in an inclusive setting, and that all children would have the right to be educated in a mainstream school unless it would not be the best interest of the child or the effective provision of education for other children in mainstream education.

Under the Act, each child assessed with a special educational need should have an individual education plan. An IEP is a plan to support a child's learning and development. The IEP is led by the child's strengths and learning needs and is developed in collaboration with them, their parents, teachers, SNAs and any other professionals who may be involved such as psychologists or speech and language therapists.

While the approach to individual education plans, IEPs, differs across counties and across schools, the core process in developing a plan that is monitored and regularly reviewed in consultation with all of those relevant in the child's life remain the same. It is a written document prepared for a named student, and it specifies the learning goals that are to be achieved by the student over a set period of time as well as the teaching strategies, resources and supports necessary to achieve those goals. This should be prepared by the school in consultation with the student, if possible.

Almost 20 years later the individual education plan provision was one of a number of parts within the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act, EPSEN, that has never been implemented, and there is no date for the implementation of this part of the Act. While many teachers prepare individual educational plans, IEPs, for their students, it is not compulsory and not inspected. The quality of such plans vary significantly and many schools do not provide them at all.

The purpose of the Bill is to grant additional functions to the inspectorate to examine and report annually to the Minister for Education on the prevalence and standard of individual educational plans for children with special education needs. Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which the Government signed up to in 2018, warns that people with disabilities should not be excluded from the mainstream education system on the basis of disability. Research by AHEAD into the transition of blind and visually impaired students to third level education identified the lack of IEP provision as the most significant challenge to ensuring appropriate access to supports and resources for students at post-primary level. Census 2016 found that the level of education completed by people with disabilities was substantially lower than the general public. We ask all parties to support this Bill and not do as they are talking of doing, which is to kick it down the road for a year.

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