Written answers

Tuesday, 23 November 2021

Department of Education and Skills

Early Childhood Care and Education

Photo of Bernard DurkanBernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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408. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the extent to which adequate provision for early years education remains an integral part of her Department’s objectives; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [57593/21]

Photo of Norma FoleyNorma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) is responsible for early years education outside the formal education system. However, my Department has a key role in supporting quality within the sector and works closely with DCEDIY.

My Department's main intervention in the provision of early years education is the Early Start programme and the Rutland Street Project. The Early Start programme was established in 1994, and is a one-year intervention to meet the needs of children aged between 3 years and 5 years who are at risk of not reaching their potential within the school system. It involves an educational programme to enhance overall development, help prevent school failure and offset the effects of social disadvantage. The Early Start programme runs in 40 primary schools in designated areas of urban disadvantage, and has capacity for 1,620 children each year. Early Start units are staffed by teachers and child care workers, and the role of the child care workers is to meet the care needs of all the children in the unit, including those children with special educational needs. The programme opens each year to new child enrolments. The Rutland Street Project was established in 1969 and informed many of the approaches to Early Start. It is supported by my Department and provides 103 places for preschool-aged children including an ASD Early Intervention Unit/Special Class.

Since the inception of Early Start, the early childhood education and care landscape has changed significantly with the introduction of the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) scheme in 2010, and the extension of this scheme to a two-year programme in 2018. In the 2019/20 programme year over 105,000 children were supported in the ECCE scheme. The ECCE scheme is under the remit of my colleague, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, and officials of my Department and its agencies co-operate closely with that Department, particularly in relation to Síolta and Aistear, the national quality and curriculum frameworks for early childhood education.

My Department also plays a key role in the ongoing development of the Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) which was launched in June 2016 by DCEDIY. AIM is a model of supports designed to ensure that children with disabilities can access the ECCE scheme. AIM supports are provided through the ECCE scheme. The main supports are grouped into universal or targeted supports. Where universal supports are not enough to meet the needs of an individual child, targeted supports are available to ensure that he or she can meaningfully participate in pre-school.

My Department has made provision for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) classes for children of pre-school age for whom places aren’t available from providers of the ECCE scheme. These early intervention (EI) classes are attached to mainstream schools. There are currently 132 of these ASD EI classes across the country providing targeted supports for 695 pupils. Moreover, where places in those classes are not currently available to pupils my Department provides Home Tuition grants to enable access to pre-school education for those children. In the last school year there were 522 pre-school children being supported by the Home Tuition scheme.

My Department’s Inspectorate has an oversight role regarding the quality of education provision for children and young people aged from 0 to 18 years. The quality improvement agenda has been further supported by the introduction of education inspections in Early Learning and Care settings delivering the ECCE programme of free preschool since 2016. The first early years education inspection (EYEI) reports were published in June 2016 on the Department of Education website. To date over 2,600 EYEI reports have been completed in a diverse range of early years settings nationally. The Inspectorate evaluates the quality of the nature, range and appropriateness of the early educational experiences for children participating in the ECCE programme. In 2019, First Five, a Whole–of- Government Strategy for Babies, Young Children and their Families was published including a range of commitments by my Department to improve the quality of early childhood education provision and practice. This includes the extension of education inspection of all state-funded ELC provision for children from birth. Officials in my Department recently launched a consultation on a revised Early Years Education Inspection Model which includes children from birth to three years old.

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