Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): I welcome Dr Peter Cunningham, who is the principal of Ceara special school, and Colm Davis, who is the principal of Tor Bank special school. I offer our apologies for not being able to visit your school this morning. You understand that the plenary sitting on the Welfare Reform Bill has been extended to today. I think that we are all probably under some type of whip to be here today, so it would have been impossible for us to have had our meeting with you. However, we would like to rearrange that if it is possible.

Dr Peter Cunningham (Ceara School): So I am told, yes. You will be very welcome. We are not going away.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Good. We hope to be in attendance. I just want to apologise for that again; it is outside our control. I ask you both to make your opening statements, and members will follow up with some questions.

Mr Colm Davis (Tor Bank School): Thank you very much for inviting us along to give evidence. Obviously, you will have read both submissions. I am sure that you read them with intrigue. You may have learnt new things from the submissions and, hopefully, the submissions were quite informative.

We have a very different view of the whole concept of shared education and that of integrated education, and maybe the terminology that comes with both. We argue, and are able to discuss, that special schools were the first integrated and probably fully inclusive schools in Northern Ireland. They have been ignored quite a bit in the examples of working with other schools, working with different cultures, incorporating and including different cultures and disabilities, even within the very small field in which they operate.

We are here to enlighten you a wee bit more and maybe look at a way forward for special schools within this concept of shared education. Hopefully, you will listen and ask a few questions.

Dr Cunningham: Absolutely. As Colm said, shared education is nothing new in the special school system. I am slightly horrified to see that we got a mention in this document from the Department of Education, albeit on page 22; it is a document that has 23 pages. It is almost as though shared education is being landed on the education world as something that is new and novel: it is not. We have been practising this in our special schools from 1986, when we came under the umbrella of the Department of Education. Even prior to that, from 1947, our special care schools were operating shared education provision, because special educational needs is no respecter of religious or political affiliation.

Special education hits everyone. Therefore, the good people who went before us set up an education system that was totally inclusive. Anybody can come into our special educational system. What frustrates me is a lot of the things that these people who were in front of you before said. I do not know who they are, but they were talking about different initiatives, different policies and different procedures. Do you know that they call us "other"? Those folk never mentioned the special schools system when they were sitting here, but they talked about community relations, equality and diversity (CRED) policies and signature policies. Did you know that we are excluded from them? Our kids do not do assessments, therefore we cannot tie into these little ticky boxes that you have to complete before you can take part in a scheme that we have been doing in my school for 20 years. That absolutely and totally frustrates the life out of me.

Mr Davis: The key question for us and for you in this debate is this: who is best placed to bring the whole concept of shared education forward? What role will special schools play in that? How will they get more integrated status? I do not particularly like the term "integrated status", by the way. I would call it "inclusive status", and I have been challenging even the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE) on that one. I have been working with NICIE to look at rebranding and redefining that terminology, which is well outdated.

I really cannot see in any proposals that came through any great difference, apart from accommodation. Educational and mutual understanding programmes have been going on since I started teaching in 1981. I am enthusiastic about the concept and idea, but the driving force, and given our financial position and being able to build complexes that have a variety of schools, mean it will be for the very long-term future.

We really have to make a positive commitment to see who is best placed to drive all this. I am not sure whether that will be the new board. It was interesting when you were asking those questions, but has enough thought been given to that in the creation of that board?

For me personally, and speaking off the record, I was very disappointed that we did not have more of a merger. If the money is coming from the Department of Education and beyond, it is disappointing that all those sectors were not integrated into our new model as a natural progression and reorganisation to enable and push people together a bit more than is going to happen. That is off the record, but you can see in the models and work that we have been doing over the years —

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): By the way, just to let you know that everything is on the record.

Mr Davis: OK. The shared education models that we have been very much looking at in the last number of years and the likes of Tor Bank, and I can speak for other schools, have been developed from within. They have been self-driven.

I think there is a concept that special schools are exclusionist by nature because they sit outside the mainstream school environment. Actually, we are inclusionary by nature. We are always looking at ways in which we can make our children more inclusive and independent, and to become fully inclusive and contributing members of society on leaving school.

We have driven a lot of this. We were doing this before area learning communities (ALCs) and the entitlement framework (EF) came about and before we got additional funding, and we get very little funding for this. As you know, special schools do not have their own budgets. We strongly believe that we should be looking at formula funding to enable us to be more of a leading edge in a lot of this activity. Having our own funding model would help us in that.

You can see where we have driven projects over the years through sharing with other schools. You can look at our make-up and, yes, we are controlled. Unfortunately, some parents find that label quite difficult. There are 120 people who work in Tor Bank School, and they are from all different backgrounds, be it cultural, religious or otherwise. It was very interesting when you were given the example of a shared bus. When children get on that bus, nobody asks what religion they are. They all come to our school. They come from west Belfast and the middle of Ballybeen. They come from everywhere, yet that has not been a problem. I like the idea of the shared buses in the future.

We were able to develop our own models by linking in with local schools, and it was not just local grammar schools or secondary schools but primary schools. Peter will be able to give you his examples of that as well. The commitment of those schools to get involved in a special school has been incredible, and the religious side of it has never been a problem for us. That is a quick overview. We will maybe talk later about some of the projects that we have been involved in.

Dr Cunningham: I have been in special education for 37 years. I know that it is hard to believe that, but I have. Colm made the point that there is a view, I believe, among education and library board officers that special education, aka special schools, is segregated provision. It could not be more integrated. I do not believe that there is a special school principal in the country who does not hold the view that a child should be educated in his own area with his peers, but some children, whose special educational needs are of such a nature and degree that they cannot be met in their local community, go to a special school because, de facto, special schools are not community schools. You might say, "Hey, but you just said that you are into shared education". Yes, we are. It happens through the bus.

My school is in Lurgan, and the smallest percentage of children attending my school live in Lurgan. They are brought in from all over the place. We are in the education system. It is horrendous. These are the points that need to be shouted from the steeples. The area learning community is absolutely brilliant. I am a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of the area learning community. I chaired the Craigavon area learning community for two years in a row. Did you know that, at the start, special schools were excluded from the area learning communities because they "had nothing to contribute"? It is absolutely breathtaking. There was not a single special school representative in the community relations documentation that the Department of Education put out a number of years ago. Every school in the country got counselling services, but special schools did not because somebody forgot about the special school system. We are consistently forgotten about.

I believe that the ALC is an absolutely fabulous conduit for examples of good practice. In my school this month, we will have children from the local Catholic maintained grammar school and we will be celebrating achievements. Children from my school attend the local controlled grammar school every week. There is a natural osmosis. Do you know why? Because it is the right thing to do. Shared education is working in our special schools. We have practitioners who are excellent at fostering and developing relationships and at fostering and welcoming cultural diversity, but we cannot get our staff out into that educational world because there seems to be a mindset. We are on the periphery of an education system. We are there but are not really part of it.

Our budgets are a disgrace. We manage less than 1% of our budget. Most schools get their budget on 1 April; I got my last budget in the middle of October. How can a school be expected to be proactive and plan when we do not know how much we have in our budget stream? We have been talking for a long time about more delegation of budgets to special schools to allow us to facilitate the types of schemes that we would like to do. Even Bob Salisbury, who I had a chat with, accepted that recommendation, but, once again, nothing was done about it.

Mr Davis: Peter made some very valid points. Without doubt, the area learning community has been fantastic, but we had to carve our own niche in that. We listened to the politics that went on. I found it very difficult at the beginning, but it allowed us to control the collaborative nature of it a bit better. The focus was very much on the academic, moving the vocational side of it and the resistance to both. We were caught in the middle; we were not perceived as a threat. In fact, it was probably quite good for us, but it was a hard battle. That is a good example of what we always have to do. We always sound like we are fighting. We did not come into this to fight; we came in to celebrate and recognise achievement and to do our best for our children and young people.

It was very interesting earlier when Nelson asked the boards about the whole concept of culture and child-centredness. We are certainly child-centred; we always have been. The whole culture side of it is very interesting. We have teachers and classroom assistants who have been trained in different backgrounds; we have some from St Mary's training college, some from Stranmillis and others from wider afield. I see progress in the last five or six years. Peter, like me, has been involved in challenging the colleges to address the whole concept of special needs so that it is not just an optional module if you feel like doing it. We are saying that, if you are truly committed to the concept of inclusion, you have to ensure that all teachers, whether a chemistry teacher or a primary-school teacher, will get an understanding of autism or whatever. We push the boat further: everyone should have a placement in a special school as part of their training. Thankfully, we have not been affected by that background. Maybe Peter will see a shift like I have over the years. It tended to be very much the case that, because special schools, except for one, were with the controlled sector, we attracted people only from Stranmillis training college. In more recent years, we have been attracting people from St Mary's. It is good to see that shift.

The children and young people who come to the like of our schools are fantastic. We love our job. We will do everything we can for them. We want them to have every opportunity possible out there in other local schools and their local areas, such as local youth clubs and the local community. We would like to ensure that we have linked up with business to get some employment opportunities for them in the future.

The barriers to the concept of shared education are in terms of us getting an integrated badge, if we want to go down that route, or being officially recognised with a more inclusive badge. Under existing legislation, it is very difficult for that to happen. That is a bit of a barrier for our children to being truly recognised as being inclusive members of society. We are seen very much as a controlled school. We do not believe that the controlled system battles for us; it does not battle for us to get a more inclusive nature or to push us down the integrated route. I have been linking with NICIE on a positive partnerships programme towards integration. We are leading the way; we are showing it good practice. We got the rights respecting schools award level 2. That is very much around the concept of respect for and understanding each other's culture. That has helped to push us down that route.

People will argue it that is not a barrier, but it is a barrier for us. A lot of our parents — we have discussed this with them — would like to see an integrated or inclusive badge and a rebranding of the school.

Dr Cunningham: Teacher training is important. We have been in special education for 60 years between us. The system is a little bit better. Every so often, though, we get a wake-up call. Just before Christmas, I had a very good student in with me; I will not embarrass the college by naming it. We were sitting having our conversation. She had a great time at the school. She looked me straight in the face, and asked, "Were your grades not good enough to teach in a real school?" That cut the legs from underneath me. She had just spent four weeks in our school celebrating our achievements, and here was somebody who would be a qualified teacher within six months but still did not view our school as a real school, and thought that the people who work in our school are in some way inferior. I thought that horrendous; it was absolutely horrible.

I have said this before: the only difference between the battle of the Somme and the relationships between the Health Department and the Department of Education is that they have not started shooting at each other yet, but the trenches have been dug.

We represent a group of children, an increasing group, who require the closest, joined-up, collaborative work with the Health Department, and we do not have that. That is a part of shared education that is maybe not in these documents, but I am not going to waste this opportunity here to say to you good folk that, at this moment in time, we are on a divergent path from the Department of Education, the Health Department and the Department for Employment and Learning. We need a very much more joined-up, collaborative model, very much so.

Mr Davis: I totally agree. Around the concept of collaboration in special education, we have tried to create those partnerships ourselves. They should have been connected at the top. Maybe you see it differently, but we certainly feel that top-level policymaking should be connected.

A lot of problems arise with therapy provision, for example, because it is not connected at the level it should be, and that is a big problem for us. Shared education for us, which is, I think, the point Peter was making, is beyond just schools. It is very much about partnerships with local community representatives, business, health and education representatives, including you. We are all here for one reason and one reason only: the best interests of each child in our schools.

I am not sure whether you have looked into the barriers for us to shared education. Finance will be a big problem for us in this model. We created the model, and it works well in the small local community in which we both operate, yet, in an ideal world, we would like to do a lot more work. Both our schools have had dual enrolments. In other words, if a child comes from 20 miles away but there is a local primary school near to where that child lives, we would like to be work a lot more with that primary school to see whether we could have partial placement in that school and partial placement with us. That costs money. We would have to send a classroom assistant and provide transport, but the benefits would be enormous for that child, who would get the best of both worlds. It is about us controlling that model, but, unless we have the money, we cannot do it.

To do such a thing, we would have to put a request in to the board. It may or may not be heard of six months later; it will probably be ditched somewhere. We will be getting it from parents. We have suggested it as a good idea to the parents, but developing such models beyond our local community is very difficult without the appropriate funding. I see that as a major barrier. We are committed to it — even the parents are committed to it — but the system has not been perfected enough to be able to do that. We have had some fantastic examples in the past of Tor Bank, like Ceara, thinking outside the box. It is being led by us. We have run a lot of the schemes. However, because of the financial constraints and whatever way things are going to go, there will be less of that in the future.

Dr Cunningham: Absolutely. When you come into Ceara School, I am told that it is like walking into Strasbourg, because we have the flags of all the European countries. We have been to every one of those countries. Our view of shared education means that we go to other EU member states to look at their special education system. The special education system that we have in the Province is far better than any other special education system. I read the greatest load of rubbish about how brilliant and integrated the Finnish education system is. I believe that the Department of Education has shares in Finland. It is all we hear. I have been there twice: it is absolutely rubbish. After a school principal showed me around his super-duper school, I asked, "Where are the special children?" He said, "Oh, they're in the annex". I said, "Oh, the annex. Can I go and visit it?" He said, "No, it's 38 kilometres away". I said, "In our country, we call those special schools". He got very upset and said, "I pay for those teachers", so now we have fiscal inclusion. I asked, "How often do those children come to your school?" With a horrified look, he said, "Never". If you go onto the Internet today or into any educational bookshop, they will talk about the fabulously integrated education system that they have in Finland. It is not a patch on what we have here, and we are firing on one cylinder. There are barriers to making our current shared education provision much more inclusive. One of those barriers is the education and library boards. Another barrier is the Department of Education. I make a plea to you good people. We have been in this job for a long time. Lots of politicians have been in my school. There has never, ever been a politician, irrespective of whatever political party they were in, who did not give the same message of support for our children and teachers. All I ask is that, in this big House, somebody somewhere should maybe say, "Let's go for a more collegiate, joined-up approach to our special schools". They are part of the education system; they are not on the periphery of it. That is a plea.

Mr Davis: To qualify: when I talked about needing money to do this, I do not mean that we want more money. It would be great if we could have that, but we need a funding model that gives us greater flexibility to use the money in a smarter way. We strongly believe that it has not been used in a smart way. We have a fantastic system of special education here, but it has probably been largely down to individual enthusiasm and commitment. Board officers have been very good over the years, but we know the model that we need to create to best meet the needs of those children. It is a different model than the one we have now. It is not just about classroom assistants and teachers; we have to learn about other things, such as buying in. It is about being able to bring in a behavioural therapist, a music therapist or an art therapist — not necessarily full-time. The whole funding model and the way in which we are funded needs to be looked at. Something that gives us a bit more flexibility to be able to do that would be fantastic for the children and young people. There would also be benefits for mainstream schools and partners that we are collaborating with. That expertise and those support services will be led from the school. Rather than a board trying to fire fight, we could be more proactive; we could support the needs of the teachers and pupils in those schools.

Dr Cunningham: The research is very clear that children who are on the spectrum with autism react very positively to a dog, usually a Labrador. It would nearly take an act of God to get a dog into my school because of health and safety and all sorts of things, but yet they have been in schools in Sweden, Norway and France, and, you know, they have not eaten a child yet. We cannot get one into our schools because of a barrier that has been placed there on no evidence whatsoever. As you can see, special education is a bit of a passion for the people who work in it.

Mr Davis: We are probably a bit of a pain for a lot of people. Many a time, I have been told to stop lobbying.

Dr Cunningham: Our children cannot speak. They literally cannot speak, so we do it for them.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): I sense your frustration. I also sense your passion. Thank you for your presentation and to both of you for your written submissions as well. I think that we will have to return to a number of the issues that you have raised again, particularly when we are looking at the SEN Bill. You are also being invited to our event on 18 March. We talk about the disconnect between health and education and the challenges. Your input to that session will be very valuable.

With regard to shared and integrated education, I always got the sense that special schools were totally inclusive and that there was never any difference made, regardless of your background or creed. Certainly, it resonated very strongly with me that you are naturally integrated, regardless of the fact that you have a "controlled" label. For me, that is always very much about management as opposed to anything else. I do not really understand why you feel that you need to take on another label of "integrated" status, which very much ties you to Catholic and Protestant as opposed to just being naturally integrated.

Mr Davis: I suppose that it is a control element for us. It is about looking at how we can develop and the governance of our schools, which we feel, at the minute, is very much dictated by a board model that is quite outdated for special schools to move forward. I feel that, with the whole concept of integration, in some cases, a lot of our parents see the controlled sector as being Protestant schools. You have this range of parents who, do not forget, come in and have no choice as to where their children go. When they are in the maintained sector, for example, they will go to the local primary school, but their child will be bussed to a controlled school somewhere else. We have had parents who initially had issues with that whole concept, but that was the only option they had: a school that was 25 miles away. It would have been a softer element for them, I would imagine — I know this from talking to them even recently — if it had been an integrated school.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Were you to transform, you would still be a controlled integrated school.

Mr Davis: As for the whole transformation, we are already there. We are already integrated, but we are not recognised as integrated in any legislation, are we?

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): I get your point that perhaps the education and library boards do not battle for controlled schools. I think that you may not be the only schools that have an issue with that. I would like to think that the controlled sector support body, once it gets up and running, will be a voice and an advocate for you as it will be for other controlled schools.

Dr Cunningham: We were not on the circulation list for the establishment of that body, which I thought was pretty interesting.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): That point has been made.

Dr Cunningham: We get documents all the time. At the moment in Craigavon, we have this debate on controlled schools, and it talks about all the controlled schools. Do you know what? It is not actually about all the controlled schools because they never came near us.

Mr Davis: With things like that, you are left out quite a bit. It is an afterthought. There is a bit of a panic when we go to an area learning community meeting or an extended learning community meeting, and, all of a sudden, you have been left out. How were we left out? The board officers have a massive panic. That does not happen just in your board; it happens across the boards.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): You both mentioned that you have chaired your local area learning communities. Obviously, there has been a movement towards greater sharing with the schools that you are involved with. Can you tell us about the benefits that not only your school but those other schools have had by having a relationship with you?

Dr Cunningham: I chaired the Craigavon area learning community for two years. I have to say that we had been working with many of the schools in the area learning community for the previous 30 years. There was nothing new. Other schools were brought into that area learning community that we did not have a relationship with, but we now do. We have very dynamic relationships in the area learning community. We are not paying lip service to an ideology: we are into practical things here. As I say, we will have a big function in the school later on this month from one of the grammar schools. We have the wall of hands, where, for everybody who comes into the school, if you help us and we think that you have helped us enough, your hand is put up on the wall. The number of people who come into our school is amazing. We have a full wall of hands of the great and the good, from the Chief Constable right the way through to the wee man who raised £50 for us.

Mr Davis: Peter Cunningham has one on the wall as well.

Dr Cunningham: We will not even go there.

As regards the advantages of the area learning community, I am going to put it down to the other schools. In my opinion, the advantages of having a special school in an area learning community are all to the other schools, because there is a conduit for them to come into the school and see it. We now have active relationships with local post-primary schools. They will lift the phone and say, "We have just got a child in our school with Asperger's. Is it all right if my year 3 teacher comes and has the craic with you? Perfect". That is the sort of thing that we are looking for. It is almost like a sticking plaster over the absence of special education in initial teacher training. The area learning community absolutely facilitates staff working relationships together. The community was mentioned earlier. We photograph any events that we hold, and they are put in the local newspaper. I absolutely and totally support the ALCs.

Mr Davis: I will go back to what you were asking for, and one example is careers education, information, advice and guidance (CEIAG). We have opened up their eyes to what is available for young people with learning disabilities and physical disabilities. Some of those kids are already in their schools. We have helped them to build partnerships with the voluntary sector that supports employment. One scheme that we are trying to operate with one of our local secondary schools is that some of their young people go out on work experience with some of our young people and support them during that work experience and learn about what it is like to be autistic, the working environment and the type of young person. It opens up their eyes and that in itself — how to work with someone — would be fantastic when it gets off the ground.

We do constant training. As Peter says, this probably has not changed, but maybe there is a bit more. We are in demand for training for very individual children and also collective training on the whole concept of autism, children with multisensory needs or whatever. Without doubt, a lot more of these children are in the system. There is the vocational route and the type of qualifications that we offer for young people. They have learned and we did not realise that those existed, so that has been of value. It has been a two-way process for our teachers and classroom assistants. They are getting a better understanding of the mainstream sector, and, if one of our children ended up being lucky enough to move into the mainstream sector, how they could be supported, the barriers, what we would need to do to support them to overcome the barriers and so on. Apart from that, there are collaborative things with music, choirs and small dramas. Some of our children in Tor Bank go to Newtownbreda High School and Knockbreda High School for classes. We have also gone on college placements together through Belfast Met. Again, all that is expensive. I know that we said that we are not asking for money, but the additional money that we got for the early learning community, and a reduction in funding for that and for EF, would put us at a significant disadvantage. Our worry is that, if that is reduced now, can that be sustainable for us, because we do not have our own budget to complement and supplement that?

Dr Cunningham: The elephant in the room about the ALC is that there are some school principals and some schools that just cannot work together. That is the reality of it. Therefore, I bring to the Committee's attention the fact that there is a level below the principal's level, and that is that every school will have an area learning community coordinator who will be the senior teacher. If I could be so bold — this is not to deskill school principals — that is where the work is done. The area learning community coordinators are the people who meet, develop and monitor all the activities that we do.

Mr Davis: If you do not mind my saying, we are involved in the extended learning community in Dundonald, and that has a make-up from nursery schools right through to secondary schools. That has been a great advantage for us. We have joint French classes and joint sports events. Familyworks counselling comes in to do counselling for the primary-school children. We do not get any funding for that, because a lot of our parents will not fill in free school meal forms. As such, we get money from the cluster but not direct funding for the school. It is an interesting one. It is only in the last five years that we have got fully involved in the extended learning community. A special school has an age span from three to 19, and the problem for us is that we are out of the school quite a lot to attend various meetings to do with all the curriculum initiatives and so on, but we still have to be legally responsible for, or to introduce into the school, a watered-down version —

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Of course, your new build and your relocation have aided that as well.

Dr Cunningham: My new build was built for 40 children; there are 140 children at Ceara School, and more children are educated in mobiles than are educated within the brick walls.

Mr Davis: We are lucky; we have the new school. I must admit that it is fantastic, and thank you to everybody for that one.

Dr Cunningham: Can I have a new school, please?

Mr Davis: Our numbers are already increasing, as Peter said. The worrying thing is that we have so many kids and young people with special education needs, and the best provision will be provided in special schools, but there are not enough places. I do not know what will happen in the near future. I am sure that all of you will have letters galore from parents looking for places. We have 10 children leaving this year, and we have only 10 places technically. We already increased the enrolment by 10 from last year. The school was built for 162, and it now has 172. The physical size of the school may not be able to accommodate any more. It will be difficult.

Mr Lunn: I had various questions for you, but you have really answered them all. I have a question about the budget. Peter, you mentioned the frustration of having to wait until part way through the year. Is it cynical to say that that is because the board waits to see what money it has left —

Dr Cunningham: We get the crumbs from the table.

Mr Lunn: Yes.

Dr Cunningham: Absolutely.

Mr Lunn: So it is not cynical; it is correct.

Dr Cunningham: It is factual. There is no budget mechanism whereby I can say, "Look, you have given me x amount of money. Could I please see the formula that you have used for calculating that?". I have been looking for that formula for the last 15 years.

Mr Davis: It does not exist.

Mr Lunn: With regard to the question of integrated status or otherwise, if you were allowed to apply for integrated status, what would the parents' view on that be? Have you tested their opinion?

Dr Cunningham: I am not sure that I would.

Mr Davis: We are still testing the waters with parents with regard to that. They are very positive about the whole concept. With respect to our school, the religious background in the community is very mixed. If they think that there are going to be benefits for their children and we were able to sell those benefits for the children, that would be —

Mr Lunn: It would not change the ethos of your schools because both are well mixed anyway. That is due to natural demographics and geography, and the fact that parents whose children have the need for what you offer would be much less concerned in the first place about whether it was a Protestant or Catholic school. It would not be an issue for them.

Mr Davis: You are right: it would not change the culture of the school. That is already there.

Mr Lunn: It would change the funding situation.

Mr Davis: That is what we are looking for, if it were a way to help change the funding mechanism. It is the fact that we cannot apply for it; we do not fit in. It is yet another equality issue for a special school. Here we go again. We are fighting our way all the time through this quagmire of a system that tends to ignore special schools.

In England, they had their own funding formula, and we have been to every finance chief and chief executive and tortured the life out of them over the last number of years about this. We brought people over from England who have worked in their special schools under a local authority funding mechanism that changed so much over the years. We have tried to say that we strongly believe that we could have a better system using the existing money but having control over it. We are excluded from that.

Dr Cunningham: Absolutely. Over here, we have the local management of schools (LMS), and, in England, there is the local management of special schools (LMSS). Our colleagues in England screamed loudly that they did not want this system 20 years ago. However, you would not find one special school principal in England now who would go back to the old way. They want to be in control of their budgets.

We want to be in control of our budgets. We are effectively de-skilled, because every other principal in the country looks after their budget and is held to account, but we are not. We get our budget in September/October-ish, and sometimes there is money in it and sometimes there is not, and little bits of money go in during the year, but you are never told.

Mr Davis: We have to remember that part of the boards' function is to help with training in special education, and we have received very little to no training in the last, gosh knows, how long, apart from team-teach training. This is because, with the closure of Muckamore, we have some very difficult children to manage. This is a good example of positive partnerships. There was a community reintegration model where schools were not consulted, and we and parents have been left with a problem on that one. We believe that if we had additional money, we could train our staff to be trainers. We do it ourselves, but it puts us under enormous pressure.

Mr Lunn: Peter, I fear that changing to integrated status would not do much about your point about half your school being educated in mobiles. You share that honour with most integrated schools.

Dr Cunningham: In fairness, if someone had asked me 10 years ago if there would be 140 children at Ceara School, I would have said, "Absolutely not". It is a fact that Ceara has the highest number of newcomer children in any special school in the Province.

I will relate this to money. Every other school in the country got £1,000 per newcomer child. Nobody told us, and I found out about it only over dinner about a year ago. I asked the education board, "Where did that money go?" and I was told that it went into the big pot. So, we had to fight. This year, we got that money put into our budget. For previous years, we did not. There was behaviour money given to every school in the country, which was allocated to those school budgets, but it was not put into the special schools budgets until we heard about it, once again, through the grapevine. If we had control of our own budgets, the schools would be run very efficiently and effectively.

Mr Lunn: You are actually making my final point. You just keep highlighting the contradictions. We are here, talking about sharing and integration, but you have all this experience going right back to 1947 — of course, not in your particular cases — and the beneficial effects for your children and other children, the relationships you have built up, and the way you operate sharing the system should be of value to this new project. Yet you appear to be being sidelined. I think you mentioned Limavady at one stage. The special school in Dungiven contributes to that area learning community, does it not? It is very well received, I believe. I can only agree with you. I am sorry, I cannot keep asking you questions.

Dr Cunningham: I suppose the irony for me is that the 11 year-old I once taught is now the lady at the education and library board who now OKs my budget. Ding ding.

Mr Lunn: I will not make the comment that comes to mind.

Mr Rogers: You are very welcome. Peter, as somebody who has visited your school, I see the point. I see that you are very passionate about your work but also very frustrated. I suppose that one of the frustrations right through the whole education system is that we are advancing shared education, but that the entitlement framework has been cut by 29%, which sort of runs contrary to that. I have a very quick question from what I have read. You say somewhere that dual enrolment should be permitted. What do you see as the benefits of dual enrolment?

Mr Davis: For me, there are about five very positive benefits. Basically, it is very difficult to get a proper diagnosis for a lot of children initially, especially young people with autism and behavioural challenges. They may not respond to the usual testing requirements and psychological tests. We get them in at three or four years of age. We get them settled down, we work on the behaviour and we put the structure and visuals in — they have no communication. They then start to develop very quickly. You are looking after the needs holistically in a special school and in a supportive environment. However, we may feel that the children would benefit from partial placement in a local nursery or year one. We have done this with Brooklands Primary School, Dundonald Primary School and St Joseph's up in Carryduff — wherever the parent wants them to go. In some cases, they have then moved to that school permanently. We have opened the eyes of not just the parents. To be honest, it is very hard to get children out of the school, because the parents are delighted that they have made such good progress. We have recognised, however, that we have done our job by getting children fully included. We support the school through that transformation programme. Certainly, that would be an idea and one of the main targets for us of dual enrolment.

We also have some children with good verbal skills but who are very low-functioning when it comes to their academic ability. They would benefit from interaction with other children in the mainstream sector, but not on a permanent basis. It might be for a morning or an afternoon. It may be for a sports activity or whatever. We find in that sort of collaborative venture that the social benefits for the young person are enormous as well. That is just two quick examples.

We have had others who have gone through the whole of primary school, spending one day a week at St Joseph's, for example, and the other four at Tor Bank. We take responsibility for the programme and work with the teachers throughout those respective years. The teacher learns a lot from having to work with a child with autism. The pupils learn how to cope and interact with the child with autism. It becomes more difficult as they move further up towards — well, the transfer is not there — the more academic years 6 and 7 and then on to secondary. It works well in early secondary. Again, when it comes to the pressures of GCSEs and so on, schools are a wee bit more hesitant to take the children and young people in.

Dr Cunningham: To be pragmatic, sometimes it is very difficult for us to reintegrate children back into a mainstream school. It means that they would maybe come to me for six weeks and then, for one week, go back to their own mainstream school for an hour or so. Then we would build that up to two hours and then a whole day. It would facilitate the move from the special school to the mainstream school and from the mainstream school to the special school. A teacher could ring me and say, "I have a wee fellow up here with sensory issues", and I would tell them that we have a great sensory room and to send him up. They would then say, "I don't know how I could send him up. You are too far away. Who is going to pay for it?". It would facilitate that.

Mr Davis: To me, a lot of that part of shared education is ignored. The ultimate goal for us is to build on that.

Mr Rogers: I think that that is fantastic, because, to me, that is really advancing shared education for the sake of the child.

Mr Davis: Very much so.

Mr Rogers: Thank you very much for that.

Mr Craig: Peter, Colm, I get the distinct impression that you have a lot of frustrations, and I can understand them. I have worked closely with Beechlawn and Parkview in my constituency, and the frustrations that you have shared with us, equally, have been shared with me by those schools. I have done what I can to help them.

I have one question, and I am honest about the fact that I am a great admirer of what you do in your schools. You are working in a very difficult environment, almost in a one-to-one teaching situation. That is the nature of what you are dealing with.

I pick up very clearly your frustration around the financial model of how your school is run. I need to be fundamentally honest here: even though you have the title of "controlled", it is an absolutely meaningless title. I am the chair of the board of governors of a controlled school, and, in fairness, I have control over the finances of that school. You do not, so it is a meaningless title for you. I do not think that the title is that important, to be fundamentally honest with you. Is your frustration really around, first, the lack of finance for your sector — end of story — and, secondly and more importantly, the lack of control that you or your governors actually have over how that is used in your school? To me, that is fundamentally ignoring the expertise that you bring to that sector.

Dr Cunningham: You are absolutely and totally right. No one could argue that my school, for example, is underfunded. You walk into Ceara School, and you see that it is not a poor school. It is not an underfunded school, but I have this thing about proactive as opposed to reactive planning. You will get a telephone call saying that there is £100, £1,000 and £5,000 but that it has to be spent by the end of next Wednesday. Or, at this time of the year, you will get a telephone call to say, "There is £30,000 left in the pot; put your best bid in". You are thinking, "I have to spend £30,000. I actually need pens, but that will take six weeks and I can't get the invoice in on time. I will buy another photocopier". Photocopiers are expensive, but you can get the money gone quickly, and it can be invoiced quickly. However, that is not the effective management of a school. Effective management is being able to predict what your budget will be; that you will get your budget on 1 April like every other school in the country, and that you will then make out a budgetary management scheme and spend your money according to the needs of the children and staff in your school as opposed to reactive spending to simply get the money spent. That is not an efficient use of taxpayers' money. It absolutely is not.

My sense of frustration is not due to lack of money, because my school is well funded, and I can speak only for my school. The frustration is in that we do not have ownership of that money. They talk about a delegated fund. Delegated funding implies that we do a bit of it and you do a bit of it; but in my school I am responsible for less than half of 1% of the total budget. That is crazy. That has to be crazy. We then have people who are not educationalists and who definitely have no experience in special education telling us, "You can't buy that because it costs more than £4,000, and you have to do whatever". I say, "But, I need this now. We have need." It does not allow for proactive planning. I have spoken to several permanent secretaries, although not the current one, and volunteered my school to be an LMSS school for one year. At one time, it was just Colm and me banging on this drum and saying, "We want our dedicated budget". I suggest that now there are quite a few special schools in the Province that would welcome the opportunity to go to a full, dedicated budget.

Mr Craig: I fully get that frustration. I was up in Parkview last week, and when I walked through the door I saw an example of what you are saying about small pockets of money being thrown at you and having to be used instantly. They had a beautiful, all-singing, all-dancing system for me to log in as a visitor. It was touch-screen and all the rest of it. My first question was, "Where the heck did you get the money for that?" The answer was inevitably what you said: it was the result of reactive budgeting. The school was told, "Here's a pocket of money we haven't spent, throw it at that." That is no way to run our education system.

Dr Cunningham: I have a problem here. Without a doubt, the greatest amount of funding spent in a school relates to staffing. I am constantly being handed documents from the education and library board pointing out that the level of absenteeism in special schools is significantly higher than that in primary and post-primary schools. But, there are not too many people in primary and post-primary schools who get their noses broken or their heads pummelled against a wall. There is not a day in life that I do not have to intervene with the girls in my school. I had to take a girl out last week to get a hepatitis B injection because a child took a lump out of her arm.

There are bald statistics. On the one hand, we do not get our budget when we want it and we do not have the responsibility over it, and on the other hand you are shown a document that says, "You're absenteeism rate is three-and-a-half times more than the average." We are not equating like with like. The population in our schools, and I do not know whether you agree, Colm, has changed significantly over the past 15 years. We now have children who have very extreme behavioural issues. It is testament to the people we have in our schools that the absenteeism is not ten times higher.

Mr Davis: As you know, the Department has done a review on the behavioural side of things. It softened the documentation that it brought out on the outcomes. We were not very happy with that. I will give you an example. I had a meeting with the Health Minister a few years ago about the community reintegration strategy when they closed Muckamore to children. How have they linked that in with schools? They have not. What additional funding has come? None.

Education is saddled with the bill for minding some of those children. In some cases, it is very difficult. We are talking about trying to manage pupils when they get to 6 feet 2 ins or 6 feet 3 ins on school premises. In those circumstances, full-time education should not be an option, but we still try to deliver it. Three children left Tor Bank school at 19, and we were very disappointed to learn that within three months they were in Muckamore permanently. So, education had been saddled with the bill the whole way through, but once the person was handed over to health, this happened. We had worked as best we could in partnership with health, which at the time pays lip service to the issue, and we have got the problems.

That expense is very hard to plan for, even if you have your own budget. Whatever funding model there is in the future for special schools, there will still need to be something sitting outside that to enable us, maybe health and education, to address such expenses. We are talking about accommodation, and we have discussed attaching a satellite to Peter's school — probably outside his mobiles — or outside my school that is organised and run by health and education. The child or young person could go there part of the day and get music therapy and whatever health could provide, but they could also come in and out of the school for as long as their concentration level would permit them to do so. Let us be realistic about this.

Mr Craig: This is more of a comment. I share your frustrations on a lot of this. I hope and pray that the Minister listens to the Committee — he normally does — and what you have said about the finances and the lack of a joined-up approach. In fairness, he listens to a lot of the special education stuff, as we saw over the sixth-form provision in Beechlawn. The issue is how you progress these people so that they can integrate into work and society. It is a frustration I share with you. I do not have an answer or a solution.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Thank you for your time this morning. Apologies again for not having relocated to Ceara, but we plan to be there in the near future.

Dr Cunningham: There is a place in the wall.

Mr Davis: To put your hand.

Mr Craig: Is that the fingerprint technology? [Laughter.]

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Thank you.

Mr Davis: Thank you very much, folks, and good luck.