Pauline Tully (Sinn Fein)

I was not expecting to be next.

As a former teacher, I am delighted to speak on this issue. I was a teacher for nearly 30 years and most of that time was spent in Breifne College in Cavan town. I am proud of my teaching career, our education system and the good work teachers, SNAs and the whole school staff, including secretaries and caretakers, put into making our schools not only good places to learn the academic subjects, but also to develop young peoples' social skills, which is almost as important as the former.

To make it a world-class system, though, a number of steps must be taken. While there has been considerable investment and good work has been done over the past number of years and we can easily see that improvement, there are still some issues that need to be addressed.As the previous speaker mentioned, our investment in education is still considerably below the OECD average. According to a report last year, which I acknowledge was based on 2021 figures, the average investment was 5.7% of GDP across the OECD area. Our figure was only 2.8% at that time. We were last out of 34 countries, and we are seen as a wealthy country.

We need to invest in our education system. It is really important. That additional investment means the capitation grant could be increased. It means that the basic utility bills like heat and light that some schools find difficult to pay could be paid without worrying or putting pressure on parents to make contributions to the school that they can ill afford. It would also make a difference in class sizes, given they are above the average in both the EU and the OECD. The INTO addressed this issue in its pre-budget submission. It asked for a reduction in class size by one to 19. That would make an immense difference. From teaching a class of 30 and a class of 15, I know the amount of work you can do with students is immense. We want to see more mixed ability teaching in our schools. If you have students with additional needs or from another country with language difficulties, the amount of time you can spend with them when the class size is small compared with a large class size is immense. It makes a huge difference to them and ensures that we have an inclusive education system.

On capitation, I also raise an issue that has been raised with me by schools. The capitation grant is paid depending on the number of students registered in a school on 30 September on the primary online database, POD. If a student enters the school after that date, the school does not receive any money for that student for the school year. There are different reasons for a student coming to a school. They may need to leave one school because of certain issues and have to go to another. They may move into a different area. They may come from a different country. It means the school does not receive the money. It also affects the school book grants in that they do not receive the money for those and have to go looking for it. That can sometimes be a complicated process and they have to wait a long time. It should be that when students move or join a school the capitation can be drawn down for that student even if it is a few months into the school year.

The school I taught in had DEIS status, so I know the benefits of DEIS in schools that have significant disadvantage. However, I am dealing with a school in one town where there are four primary schools. Three of them have DEIS status and one does not. They feel it puts them at a huge disadvantage to the other schools, and they do not understand why they are not deemed eligible for DEIS funding when students attending the school come from the same area as the students attending the other schools. I know there are different criteria, one of which is homelessness. The school would say it has families who are homeless, but they are not registered as homeless because they are maybe living with family in the box room or sleeping on the sofa. There is also a stigma attached to registering as homeless so people do not want to do it. There are criteria. Could this be looked at again to ensure that all schools are assessed in all areas?

I would like the Minister to expand on the DEIS plus scheme. Does it provide additional supports to schools that already have DEIS status or will it include more schools that currently do not have DEIS status in the DEIS programme? As part of the DEIS programme, the school completion programme is excellent. The cuts to that programme after austerity had a huge impact. I recall teaching in the early 2000s during what we called the Celtic tiger period. The school completion programme had significant funds and could therefore employ a number of people to work in the school. One of the people employed in the school I worked in was a school counsellor. She did immense work with students who may have had mental health issues or may have been self-harming. Unfortunately, her position and other positions were gone after austerity. I would like to see investment in the school completion programme because it has a huge part to play in ensuring that students from disadvantaged backgrounds, including Traveller backgrounds, stay in school longer. The benefits they reap from that will be seen in later years.

I concur with the previous speaker on Irish language education. Most of us spend 13 or 14 years in the Irish education system and when we come out of the school we cannot string together a conversation in Irish. There is huge interest at the moment among young Irish people in learning and speaking the language. The focus in our schools seems to be wrong because it is almost all on the written element. In secondary school especially, it is about passing an exam. I did not teach Irish but I had situations where students just wanted to be able to write the language. They did not even know what the words meant once they could string the sentence together on a page. I did French in school for five years and at the end of that time, I was not great at conversation in French either. I do not think I would have headed off to France and been able to engage with French people. Maybe we need to look at how we teach languages other than English in our schools, but particularly our national language. We learn to speak a language by immersion in it, by talking to others and listening to our parents and others around us as children. The same should happen in primary school education where the focus should be more on oral skills.

Special education is obviously a big issue. We had more than 120 students with no school placement at the beginning of the school term last year. I know many of them have received school placements since then. We also have a lot of students who might have a school placement but it is not necessarily an appropriate one or it may not be in their community. I know there has been considerable investment in special education, but we need to look at how we make education more inclusive for all so that students with additional needs can attend their local school with their siblings, where possible, or attend a school in their community, if at all possible, instead of having to travel up to an hour to receive the appropriate education.

Early intervention is key. Many students are either non-verbal or pre-verbal going into schools. They are not getting the early intervention students were getting from the intervention teams some years ago. They are not getting it from the children's disability network teams, CDNTs. That is leading to huge problems where there is a lack of ability to communicate. It is leading to frustration. In some cases, it is leading to self-harm or to children causing injuries to other pupils and staff and to school placements regularly breaking down. We need to find out how we can ensure every child receives an appropriate education with the appropriate supports. I know from talking to a number of primary schools that they would love to see the Minister rolling out therapies in schools, an issue she has spoken about. They feel this is necessary to help them and help the students to learn. They do not know how to deal with students who have complex needs. I would like to see inclusive education but that cannot happen until supports for children and staff are in place and all staff are trained to teach in special education settings.