Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Our witness is Chris Donnelly, principal of St John the Baptist Primary School. You are welcome, Chris. I thank you for giving up your time to come to the Committee. We were clear at the outset of the inquiry that we wanted to hear from people who work in the education system about their experience of special educational needs (SEN) in schools. We hugely appreciate your giving up your time to bring your school leader perspective to the issue.

I will hand over to you. We ask for an initial presentation of up to 10 minutes, and then we will move to questions and answers. We will try, as far as possible, to keep each enquiry to five minutes per member so that we can get round everybody. I ask members to be succinct in their questions and you, the witness, to get to the answers as quickly as you can in order for us to get to the nub of the issue. Over to you, Chris.

Mr Chris Donnelly (St John the Baptist Primary School): Thank you, Chair. First, I express my gratitude at receiving an invitation to contribute to the Education Committee's consultations on this important matter at a critical time for all of us, as educators, parents and policymakers. I have been in the vocation of education for 26 years, half of which has been in a school leadership position. I care passionately about the mission that we, as educators, undertake to play a central role in the holistic formation of children.

What needs to be understood and fully appreciated at this time is that the developing and ever-expanding special needs crisis in schools is, at its core, a consequence of societal changes that are well beyond the function and capacity of schools to control. We are now in a place where greater numbers of children than at any time before cannot be taught in a mainstream classroom alongside their peers, hence the development of special needs nursery classes, specialist provision in mainstream schools (SPiMS) and the continuing expansion of the dedicated special school sector. The number of pupils with statements has increased by 51% since 2017-18. There are now almost 30,000 kids with statements. The number of children who are being taught in special schools is up by 25%. The Education Minister recently projected that 6,000 more special school places will be needed and 5,000 more places for SPiMS will be required to keep up with the anticipated need over the next decade, a time frame in which, it is anticipated, the overall number of schoolchildren will decline. Those are simply astonishing, breathtaking figures. Disturbingly, our lack of critical self-reflection is in spite of the fact that we know that it is only getting worse.

Alongside that and not unrelated to it is the fact that we have a greater volume of classroom assistants in schools than at any time in history. That is driven by a recognition that, in order to help many other children to be educated in a mainstream classroom environment and to access the curriculum appropriately, those additional school-based staff are essential. If you took away classroom assistants today, the numbers of children requiring SPiMS or a place in a dedicated special needs school would surge dramatically, beyond even the alarming projections that are already out there, whilst the educational experience of other children in mainstream classrooms would be significantly harmed and diminished.

At this point, let me say that I firmly believe that we need, as a matter of urgency, to transform our approach to classroom assistant provision. The one-to-one approach made sense when the number of children requiring classroom assistants was relatively small. In today's mainstream school environment, up to and beyond 20% of children can be on the special needs register, with primary schools having between 20 and 40 classroom assistants employed on a one-to-one basis. I do not want to be misquoted; I am a school principal. There will always be exceptions where some children will require one-to-one, but, as a general principle moving forward, it is something that we need to look at. It would make far greater sense to allow schools to have the freedom to deploy classroom assistants to meet the acute needs of children as they arise across the school.

Our approach to the provision of classroom assistants has sustained and ingrained a culture of the individual that is detrimental to the overall mission of the school. Whilst I fully understand that parents will seek every avenue to secure additional support for their child, at a system level, we should encourage an approach that can best deliver for all our children, not least in the throes of the special needs crisis that we are in.

Perhaps the most regrettable and wholly avoidable aspect of the developing crisis has been the decision of the education policymakers to substantially increase the bureaucratic and administrative burden associated with special needs. There was a time in living memory — I am talking about the last seven, eight or nine years — when an out-of-class special educational needs coordinator (SENCO) or vice principal could be tasked with incorporating within their daily role taking remedial literacy sessions with children at risk of falling behind in the critical years from primary 2 to primary 4. That time has long since passed. The job of SENCO involves being completely snowed under with the demands of education bureaucracy and the repercussions of the processes that that bureaucracy has put in place.

The annual review process involves a school taking the lead on preparing for meetings that are obliged to take place for all statemented children. The burgeoning numbers of such pupils in mainstream schools already meant that the process had begun to occupy an alarmingly large amount of time. The development of SPiMS has massively increased the workload for schools, including mine, which answered the call to embrace what essentially amounts to a hybrid school model where mainstream schools become part-special schools.

The move away from individual education plans (IEPs) to personal learning plans (PLPs) is a grave error that should have been anticipated. It is entirely without logic to have taken the decision to exponentially increase the admin workload associated with each child designated as having special needs while knowing that the volume of such children had massively increased at the same time. There can be only one result from that decision, and we are seeing it play out in schools today, where teachers find that they simply cannot manage the PLP process for all the eligible pupils in front of them, with its associated targets, demands for meetings, consultations, implementation of strategies, actions, reviews and evaluations, all while somehow still managing to teach a classroom filled with children.

In our school system, a consequence of the manner in which we separate children into different sectors from age 11 means that we create a sector that, to all intents and purposes, consists of the heavy lifters: the non-grammar, post-primary schools. The job of the school leader and teachers in that sector was already the most challenging in our system before the SEN crisis exploded in recent years. How we have sought to manage that crisis has only exacerbated the inequalities in our system.

A significantly greater volume and percentage of children with statements will attend non-grammar schools than their grammar counterparts. There will also be significantly greater numbers on the SEN register. The decision to expand the admin workload and processes associated with those children effectively diminishes the time, energy and capacity for teachers to do many other things that matter. The same applies to the SENCO and the school leaders.

The decision to target SPiMS exclusively at non-grammar schools at post-primary level has had the inevitable consequence of further increasing the SEN workload for non-grammars, taking precious time away from other endeavours. That pattern is replicated at primary-school level, where schools in disadvantaged areas experience and struggle to cope with the additional SEN-related workload and processes burden that is, to a large extent, spared to more affluent school communities. We need to recognise the damage that is being done to the objective of effectively tackling educational underachievement in breaking the cycle of disadvantage by not appropriately organising and thinking through our system-level approach to the SEN crisis.

The inability of other organisations to cope with the profound societal changes has impacted on schools too. Those organisations have taken the course open to them in order to reduce their workload pressures in relation to children, with the consequence being that school staff have been tasked with dealing with duties that others have been able to pass on without anyone stopping to think of the impact on those in schools who are the front-line service.

Social services offloaded responsibility for organising and leading on the relationship between looked-after children, the home and schools, courtesy of the personal education plans (PEPs). It is a significant workload demand that, they claim, they could no longer meet, so it was passed on to schools.

The Education Welfare Service (EWS) was tasked with addressing a serious crisis regarding school attendance figures. Effecting the cultural changes required to address the developing chronic attendance crisis among our poorest and most academically challenged pupils, in particular, will necessitate a robust, efficient and dynamic approach. It is nowhere near there.

The catering service within the Education Authority (EA) has been facilitated with allowing schools to take on extra admin roles that should logically be fulfilled by those tasked with the job of making and distributing food for the children. School staff should not have to organise and facilitate the entire process of arranging meetings and organising paperwork on such matters. That should be a canteen service responsibility with outcomes shared with schools, not the other way round.

On the EA transport team, think of this: the development of SPiMS has further expanded transport operation in the education system. School staff are being left to complete more paperwork and admin duties to validate claims and to monitor and verify pupil attendance. The EA's decision to pay some parents directly to bring their kids to school has created an additional admin role for schools, as it requires to be closely monitored.

EA admin teams, particularly in the post-COVID era, have been shedding responsibilities and duties routinely completed by EA staff onto schools. Wages, once completed by EA staff, are now weekly having to be completed by school principals. The recruitment process is now wholly handled by school staff without EA input. School staff now routinely have to input contracts digitally. That did not happen in the past.

Perhaps most worryingly, there is the matter of the changes being rolled out for the peripatetic staff, under the cover of the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) graduated response and local impact teams (LITs). Peripatetic support services, even if unwittingly, are in the process of creating further distance between themselves and children on the front line. Where peripatetic support is most beneficial is when the actual time spent face-to-face, engaging with the child and developing the specific needs, is optimised. Through the process of changes that have been and will be introduced, the net result will be less face-to-face intervention from professional teachers who do not have the responsibility of teaching a full class and have more time to prepare admin to give advice and guidance to the class teacher, who has a full class to teach.

What do we need to do? We need to pull the emergency brake. The PLPs and the annual review process need to be streamlined and considerably so. Processes that were conceived and devised for the scenario in which a smaller number of children would be involved are simply not fit for purpose in an age when 20% to 30% of children in a school are deemed as having special needs. The one-to-one classroom assistant model needs to be urgently reviewed and a much more effective system put in place, one that can allow schools to target human resources to best meet the needs of all learners without increasing the admin workload. We need to recognise that the most important and consequential engagement is that between the child and the educator. Consequently, organising our education system in linked bodies in a manner that protects and optimises that engagement is both rational and logically most likely to yield dividends.

If the school is genuinely best placed to make a difference for children, we need to optimise the ability of school staff to do that very thing, and we need to ensure that all support agencies prioritise provision of professional face-to-face engagement between professionals and children. Therefore, strategically utilising the support of linked bodies to protect that makes sense, by taking practical steps that include handing responsibility for personal education plans back to social services; taking transport admin out of schools and into a centralised and accountable EA structure; and enhancing the role and remit of catering and removing the school's involvement to optimise precious time for more impactful endeavours. Finally, we need a society-wide conversation that seeks to understand why children are changing in the profound manner that has become apparent over recent years. That will inevitably lead to the necessity of addressing what has happened in a child's domestic and wider social environment that has led to the changes that we see.

The debilitating nature of all those developments is most apparent to the person tasked with the role of strategically directing the school: the principal. In a school, the immediate comes before the important. Taking the right decisions about priorities is the most critical element of a job that involves keeping at least a dozen balls in the air at one time. From the stance of school leaders, the most precious commodity that we can have in a school is time. How we use that time is crucial to shaping the school culture; raising the bar of expectation; motivating and inspiring; developing and enhancing accountability mechanisms and processes; developing, broadening and sustaining academic and pastoral provision; and promoting and sustaining a high-standards culture. All of that requires being a visible presence in and across the establishment: walking the corridors; catching a glimpse of interactions that can immediately be an indicator of a problem or something going well; being present in the playground or the dinner hall; and meeting and greeting parents in the morning and afternoon and having the brief exchanges that reveal something about the child's domestic background. Those are not and cannot be written into a daily

or a job description, but I defy anyone to tell me that they do not constitute a most valuable aspect of the school leader's role. Decreasing the time that school leaders can dedicate to those core consequential endeavours will not improve the educational experience of or the educational outcomes for our children. We need to start recognising what matters and to plan our actions accordingly.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you, Chris. You got through a lot there in your 10 minutes. It is impressive that you got through so much material in the time, so I thank you for your initial remarks.

I ask members to indicate to the Clerk if they want to ask a question, but I will make a start with my questions. I will track back to one element of the system that you have not raised, before picking up on some of the issues from your presentation, and that is placements. I am keen to get a school leader's perspective on that. We heard some evidence from the EA, in particular, that it seems to be quietly confident that it will be in a better place with placements for children with special educational needs for the 2026-27 academic year. It is talking about focused engagement with schools and school leaders around how to manage that. Can you give us an assessment of what the placement of children with special educational needs feels like from the school leader's perspective, and do you share the confidence that things are changing and moving in the right direction?

Mr Donnelly: In the first instance, we need to be clear that, when we talk about placements, we are talking about children who are outside the mainstream, because, obviously, there are statemented children who are within the mainstream side of the school. Traditionally, children who could not be taught in the mainstream class environment attended special schools. Quite simply, there are not enough places in special schools. Over the last number of years, schools have been approached — as mine has — to open up specialist provision classes. This is the fourth year that my school has had specialist provision classes; we have three classes.

Initially, I welcomed it, and that is simply because it was consistent with the Catholic ethos of the school. There were children in the community who required a place, and it was within our vision of wanting to be a school that embraced the local community and to be there for parents and children. You want to provide that. I had Middletown in the school from the outset. My staff worked with Middletown throughout industrial action, and Middletown works with only five or six schools throughout the North at any one time. We did that because we wanted to ensure that our staff were best positioned to meet the needs of those kids.

The difficulty that I have seen over the last number of years — this is year 4 — is that certain schools are being asked to shoulder responsibility and certain sectors are not, to be blunt. The schools that were asked and that seemed to be approached by the policymakers disproportionately are in working-class communities. If you are interested in tackling educational underachievement, you will know that, disproportionately, that is a greater challenge at primary level and post-primary level for schools that have a greater number of children from deprived backgrounds. If you look at post-primary schools, you see that the non-grammar sector has 90% of newcomer children and 90% of looked-after children in addition to all the children who struggle with numeracy and literacy, because that is the basis on which we have our selection system. A strategic policy-led decision that leads to the responsibility being placed exclusively on those schools is morally wrong. Not only is it morally wrong, but it will be detrimental to us as a society and as a system, because, quite simply, schools are human institutions. You cannot put the responsibility on the school leader, the SENCO, the teacher and everybody else for the heavy lifting challenge at post-primary level and then say, "You are also exclusively going to be where SPiMS will be located". I even noticed that, in the most recent list of schools that have been added to take on board units, it is still, in a very disproportionate way, school communities in working-class areas that are shouldering that responsibility.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): That is a helpful perspective. I am conscious that, in giving your evidence, you are a working principal, but you are also speaking to system-wide issues. I understand that there may be a wee bit of tension there for you, and I want to be sensitive to that.

You have taken on specialist provisions, and your evidence clearly shows that you want to ensure that those provide the best standard of education, as does the evidence from your colleagues more widely. Do you feel that the wrap-around support from the EA and, perhaps, the wider health system has come in for those specialist provisions in the way that you would have needed it to?

Mr Donnelly: There are good people involved in all of that. No one is coming at the issue with a malevolent agenda, but the nature of the crisis meant that I got a phone call in mid-May. I recall that the caller asked, "Do you have spare classrooms in your school?". I said, "Yes", and they said, "Can we meet you in 20 minutes?". Over the course of an hour-long meeting, I started a process of getting teachers and classroom assistants who were to become specialist teachers and specialist provision classroom assistants overnight. That is writ large across the system. I was able to be very proactive in getting Middletown Centre for Autism and the specialist setting support team (SSST) in. Those great teams provide confidence and guidance to the teachers and classroom assistants.

I have to say, however, further to a conversation that the Chair led prior to my contribution, safe handling and restraint are serious issues in specialist provision, because team teaching training has not been provided to teachers or classroom assistants. In my school, we are in year 4, yet it has still not been provided. Those are real and valid concerns. Staff want to feel that they know exactly what they can do when somebody is extremely dysregulated. You are dealing with human beings. As a school leader, I need to give them confidence.

The system endeavours to do that, but it is a crisis. You get, basically, a day's training at the Antrim Board Centre, and, lo and behold, you become a specialist provision teacher. It is a case of learning on the job. As school communities, we are up for that, but it needs to be handled in a way that sees schools shoulder things more evenly across the system. We need to recognise that, if we are going for a hybrid model, we need to be careful. My fear is that schools that are asked to take on board too much specialist provision will lose the ability to focus effectively on the challenges that they have as a mainstream school.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I will make a comment, and then I will open it up to other members. We hear from the Department that we should not look at specialist provisions as a stopgap measure that is somehow secondary to special schools. If that is the case, we need to see it being delivered strategically, planned and given the right support. That is the issue when people are approached in May and asked, "Can we get provision in?". We have to find a way, as a system, to move beyond that so that there is confidence to take an intervention. That is probably a comment more than anything else.

I will bring in the Deputy Chair and then the other members who have indicated.

Mr Sheehan: Thanks, Chris. I will go back to the way that the burden is being unfairly placed on the shoulders of schools in disadvantaged areas. I spoke to an official recently who said, "That is to be expected, because a greater proportion of children with special needs are in disadvantaged areas. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that they would go to schools in their area". What is your response to that?

Mr Donnelly: First, it may be the case that a higher percentage of children in specific disadvantaged communities are statemented and require provision other than mainstream provision, but by no means is that exclusively the case. Secondly, even if that were the case, I could point to — I will not name schools — any number of post-primary schools in the grammar sector that are situated in working-class communities. As far as I know, there is still not a single grammar school that has SPiMS. I can point you to any number of primary schools that might have a more affluent enrolment, but, as the crow flies, are not far from a neighbouring working-class community.

If we look at it at a system level and think about developing our children in the best way for our society and workforce in the future, we need to realise that, having already objectively appreciated that there are greater challenges in targeting and developing children's potential and effectively tackling underachievement in certain sectors and school communities, we will only make it much more difficult for ourselves as an education sector and for those children by not strategically looking at SPiMS across the whole school estate.

Mr Sheehan: I agree with your point about grammar schools being situated in working-class areas. There are grammar schools on the Antrim Road in north Belfast and even in my constituency of West Belfast that do not have any specialist provision.

I will move on to your point about the move from IEPs to PLPs. Will you give the Committee more of an explanation of why that has been a mistake?

Mr Donnelly: We need to look at it logically. The percentage of children who are on the special needs register, be it for stage 1, 2 or 3 provision, is, for most schools, over 20%. That is one in five children. The percentage has only grown over recent years. It is getting bigger and bigger. Given that the consequential endeavour is engagement between the teacher and the children in the class, that the volume of children who require PLPs is greater and that we want to give sufficient time to engagement and planning teaching and learning, why on earth would we make the planning process bigger as well? Exponentially increasing teachers' admin and bureaucratic workload for each child who is deemed to have special needs while knowing that the volume of such children is growing does not make sense. We should be doing the very opposite. We should streamline the plan so that teachers can get their head above water to look at the broader issue of what they do and strategically develop how they will differentiate that in the classroom.

That applies not just at the classroom and teacher level but at the broader school level, because the workload is taken up to the school leadership. In a lot of primary schools, the SENCO happens to be the vice principal. The vice principal may therefore have two roles, but the SENCO part overshadows everything and takes over so much. That manifests in a serious way, because it is not as though the people at school leadership level were previously doing nothing — they were already doing extremely important things — but the immediate comes before the important. If we have a statutory obligation to do PLPs and annual reviews, other things have to be sacrificed.

When we start to sacrifice things that, we know, tangibly benefit children, the practitioners need to talk to the policymakers at a system level and say, "We need to pause". People do things for a reason and act rationally, but they do not realise that the practical manifestation of those things at school level causes immense difficulties.

Mr Sheehan: Chris, I have another question about that.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Make it a really brief one, given today's timings.

Mr Sheehan: Yes. You outlined the crisis that there is in our school system. Do you think that the Minister's RAISE programme will help or hinder that situation?

Mr Donnelly: The remit of the RAISE programme is to tackle underachievement. My issue with that is this: the programme's eligibility criteria jettisoned the traditional approach, which was linked more closely to deprivation indicators. We know that, across our society, the deprivation indicators have continued to be robust and that, unfortunately, from year to year and decade to decade, they have not changed much. Moving away from objective criteria linked to deprivation meant that schools that could have benefited from that programme's support do not benefit from it.

When I look at the schools that RAISE is open to, which includes a long list of grammar schools and primary schools in affluent areas, I see a missed opportunity. Given what I have been explaining about what is happening in the education environment, where we see the special needs challenge being disproportionately placed on primary and post-primary schools in working-class communities, it might be a wasted opportunity to provide support that could make a difference.

Mr Sheehan: Would something like the Engage programme have been a better plan?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Quickly, please.

Mr Donnelly: The Engage programme used deprivation-based eligibility criteria, so I assume that it would be more effective as a programme to meet such needs and challenges.

Mr Sheehan: OK. Thanks for that.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Sorry, but we have to stick to time, given the agenda that is ahead of us.

Mr Brooks: At the outset, I will apologise for barking at times. I have a Strepsil in my mouth. It has been a rough enough week.

Thank you very much for the presentation. There was a lot of useful information in there. I will listen back to it as well, because there was an awful lot to digest. I do not want to spend a lot of time on this, but I know that the politics about grammar schools is played out in here often. When you say that schools in working-class communities are shouldering most of the weight, although there are some cleavages on that, are you talking specifically about grammar schools not shouldering any weight or any school in an area that is better off?

Mr Donnelly: I want to be clear. First, I am not demonising any schools. I went to a grammar school, as did my children. I initially qualified as a politics teacher. At that time, in the late 1990s, I more than likely would have ended up in a grammar school as a politics teacher, because there simply was not A-level provision in a lot of non-grammar schools. Life takes you in different directions, however. I am not about attacking any sector. We are all in the same job. The difficulty with how we are meeting the specific special needs crisis — if I am answering the question right, Mr Brooks — is that SPiMS is disproportionately applied. At post-primary level, the classes are being opened exclusively in non-grammar schools, while, at primary level, in a very disproportionate way, they are being opened in schools in working-class communities. Whether that is on the Shankill or the Falls makes no difference.

I know that people in the member's party have written about underachievement and that his party has a policy on it. We know that those same schools disproportionately have the daunting challenge of trying to target, tackle and eradicate underachievement, so getting them to shoulder, almost exclusively, that additional challenge is, on a human level, challenging. From school leader down to teacher level, that makes it much more difficult. At a system level, looking at how we manage that is important to me.

Mr Brooks: I have some sympathy with that element. There are schools in my constituency that reflect what you say. For some of them, however, it has been a benefit as well as a challenge, because, before, they had low numbers but now they do not. Resource has to follow the challenges in that regard, so I have some sympathy.

You said that you do not want to be misquoted, so you can correct me if I am wrong, but you commented on the unsustainability of the one-to-one model, given the growing numbers of children with SEN. On the basis of your experience as a principal, what do you think can be done in future? I know that other policymakers will look at international examples and so on, but, from your perspective, is there anything that can be done to improve the way in which that model operates? Are there other models that could be looked at?

Mr Donnelly: I want to be careful. There are children who require —

Mr Brooks: Absolutely.

Mr Donnelly: — close provision and support. There are other children who may require it, but, from the leadership perspective at the school — at the class teacher and school system level — it may be that providing a classroom assistant who is there to help a number of children in the class is a better way in which to manage that human resource. Not only that but, over time, some children may become more regulated and be more readily able to access the curriculum, in which case the school, instead of going through the whole process, would like the ability to move that classroom assistant to another child who, for a variety of reasons that happen in children's lives, has become dysregulated.

It is important that we start to look at provision and support strategically. We also have to realise that this is a £400 million investment that we are making in our schools annually, and it is only getting larger. The one fear that schools have is that talk about moving away from the model is EA code for reducing the volume of classroom assistants. I was clear in my report and will say it again: if we were to do that, we would create severe problems in schools. We need to realise that the provision of classroom assistants alongside teachers is allowing a lot of children to continue to access mainstream provision. That speaks to the societal changes that I am talking about, which we have not even begun to address here. As a society, we are not even talking about why it is that we need special needs nursery classes. Why is it that a greater number than at any time in history cannot access a mainstream class?

Mr Brooks: I do not think —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): A final comment, David.

Mr Brooks: I do not think that viewing it through the prism of moving away from the one-to-one model as a way of reducing the number of classroom assistants is valid. Equally, however, we should not focus the entire debate on that issue. That is not how we should frame it. We should look at whether there are more effective models and, given the amount of money that we have or are likely to have in future, at how we can help children in the most efficient and beneficial way. I somewhat agree with you.

Mrs Guy: Thank you, Chris, for your evidence. You have passion and authority when talking about the issue, and that has come across really strongly. First, to get some clarity from you, I will ask you one question about something that caught my eye in your briefing paper:

We know that schools are being asked to do more, and you have made that clear today when talking about the changes. What do you mean when you say that there has been a failure to utilise other public organisations? Is that such things as youth provision and Sure Start?

Mr Donnelly: No. Perhaps my wording is poor there. I was talking about the fact that, in education, there have been developing concerns about transport. The idea that the mainstream school has a serious role to play in the monitoring and the admin of transport has become attached to the provision of SPiMS. That should be removed completely. Transport, centrally, should be able to be organised by the EA, because, again, the most precious commodity is time: how I am using my time; how the SENCO is using their time; and how the class teacher is using their time. More and more time is being frittered away.

That also applies to catering services. The EA and education policymakers globally need to realise that we have more children than ever before with allergies and dietary concerns. Why are we not dealing with that centrally, as we do with the provision for applying for free school meals? I ask for a central uploading. Take it out of the school so that my time and the SENCO's time and that of our equivalents in every school does not have to be taken away from the endeavour that matters most. The issues around diet and allergies are serious ones, but what I say is that, at a system level, we need to look at that.

I also referred to education welfare. A transformation process is happening on that, but it needs to be expedited. We must be much more effective in asking the awkward questions of parents at a system level. I have long experience of this, and it is in no way about bad parents. I have gone to people's doors in my capacity as a vice principal and a principal, and I know that, often, you meet a broken mother. You are then trying to think about what support you can signpost that parent to and what you can provide in the school. We had the Happy Healthy Minds programme. I had music provision in my school, and we set up a bespoke nurture programme. If I am getting only so far, however, I need the Education Welfare Service to step up more than it seems to be capable of doing currently. I refer to those groups, as well as to social services.

Mrs Guy: That is clear. I appreciate your clarity.

I will pick up on something that you said in your evidence. You raised the question of why children are changing. Lucy Crehan came to the Committee and talked about school readiness and issues of child development being a ticking time bomb. We had evidence from a SENCO during the week that a higher number of children are coming to school who are not ready to learn. Other teaching professionals that I have dealt with have also talked about that. Children have toileting issues, cognitive issues, a lack of concentration, screen time issues etc. I even heard an example of a child who had to get physiotherapy because they did not have the fine motor skills to hold a book or turn a page. Is that an issue that you encounter? If so, what interactions with the Department of Health are needed to address those issues for parents by providing them with the support that they need?

Mr Donnelly: We need to talk about it. It does not matter what party the Minister of Education is from. Regardless of party, the Minister will be making the same statements. We need several thousand more children to be in SPiMS. We project several thousand more for special schools. Why? You referred, Michelle, to speech and language issues, toileting problems, behavioural issues and anxiety-based concerns. Those happen at a volume that simply was not the case before. That is why we have special needs nursery classes. That is why we are now creating a rush to have more and more SPiMS, but we are not stopping and saying that, as a society, we need to have awkward conversations. Policymakers need to lead on that. It is not about judging; it is about saying that there may be philosophical reasons for it.

We have moved from the age of deference and authority a couple of generations ago to a different era. We need at least to address that. We need to ask questions. Is there a problem with devices? What do policymakers do about that? Do we try to put a blanket ban on children having devices before a certain age? I am only throwing things up in the air. That conversation would be best led by the leaders in our society. I am a school principal and am not in any way criticising parents, but, from my role, I know that one of the things that I have to have is awkward conversations. I have them with parents who often may not realise that the bar of expectation is higher than they might have thought. That could relate to attendance at school, punctuality, reading at home or doing spellings at home. As a society, we need to address that, because something is happening that has led to this scenario, and all that we are doing at the moment is firefighting.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I have to draw that one to a close. Apologies again, but I have to be rigid with time.

Mr Burrows: Thanks, Chris. I agree with you. We are ducking the most important issue. When I raised it, some people raised their eyebrows at me and said that, if you have special educational needs, you were simply born with them and there is nothing that we can do. I said that I could not accept that, because, if there were a rise in any other condition, we would ask questions. Yes, there was under-diagnosis years ago, but we are now in the situation in which 23% of our children have special educational needs. If the projected rise continues, that figure will reach 40%. At some point, having special educational needs will mean not that you have additional needs but that you have normal needs. That is the mathematics of it, once it goes over 50%. I therefore concur with what you said: we have to have the courage to ask, without judging parents, why children are having more of those issues. I am echoing what you said. We need to be fearless about that but also compassionate. I welcome what you have said, because you are the first witness who has said it.

You mentioned screens. Towards the tail end of my time in the police, when I went into places, I saw — I say this without judgement — children sitting in front of a massive screen at two years of age with a massive bowl of sugary sweets. That cannot be good for brain development. Those are the honest conversations that we have to have, and I agree that some families are in difficult spaces. It is not about blame, but we need to understand that our children are getting into a position of having lifelong problems that might be preventable. I wanted to put that on the record.

I could ask you lots of questions, but I will ask just one. I have been going around mainstream schools that offer special educational needs provision. The number of principals and teachers who tell me that they go home having been bitten or spat at by children is considerable. Again, that is not to blame the children, because they have developmental issues and vulnerabilities, but the staff do not have Team Teach training, nor do they have bite-resistant arm guards or visors. Is that accurate?

Mr Donnelly: Absolutely. I said earlier to the Chair that I had enquired recently of the EA why I could not access Team Teach for my staff. I am led to believe that, until now, it has been offered only to special school staff but, later in this academic year, the EA will introduce it into specialist provision. That is a concern in and of itself, because we have identified that specialist provision is essentially an extension of special schools. We believe that those children cannot be accommodated in a mainstream class environment. We should seek to train our teachers and classroom assistants so that they feel most confident in appropriately meeting every challenge that they face with children.

I will say one other really important thing. Parents of special needs children do a fantastic job. When you have sat with parents who are at the end of their tether, as, I am sure, you, as public representatives, have done, you realise that. We have the children during school hours, and it is a blessing and a privilege to have them in school with us, but a parent's responsibility for their children is 24/7. I want to make sure that I in no way diminish the role, obligations, duties and responsibilities of parents of special needs children, which are immense. In an overwhelming sense, parents endeavour to meet that role. At a system level, we need to see how we can help them.

Part of the help involves talking to people to see whether there need to be cultural or societal changes that can benefit us all.

Mr Burrows: I concur with that. I have family members with special educational needs, and I know the parents have a very tiring responsibility.

It is outrageous that there are teachers in our schools who are not given the basic equipment to prevent them from being bitten. It is a breach of health and safety. I do not want to make an analogy about human beings, but people cannot be sent to work on a building site and not have a hard hat. People need to be given the protection to do their job, and that includes de-escalation training. If you have to restrain a child because they are going to injure themselves or someone else, you need to have the equipment and the training. The situation is unacceptable, and the Minister needs to deal with the question urgently.

I have one other question.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Be brief, Jon. We are near the end of our time.

Mr Burrows: I have been in sensory rooms, and some of them are converted storerooms that are not fully padded or big enough. Is that a problem?

Mr Donnelly: It may be in some schools. There are three sensory rooms in my school. The parent group helped me put in a nurture and sensory room in my first year at the school. It was not funded. We did it ourselves. Even in the summer of 2019, we could see that the obligation for schools to expand the pastoral provision was becoming greater, and that was before my school brought in specialist provision. David referenced it earlier, but my school is blessed to have specialist provision. The staff and parents get so much out of it. Having specialist provision adds to the school community. It is a part of what my school is. If we are going to roll that out across the system, we need to be careful, however. We need to make sure that everybody is on board and playing a role so that we can continue to meet the needs of the mainstream children alongside the specialist provision children. We need to do that equitably so that, at a system level, we are not jeopardising other priorities, such as providing the best chances for kids from more disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you. I will draw that to a close in the interests of time.

Chris, I am glad that you finished on that note and with that line of inquiry. It is important to be clear that nobody around the table is saying that the children with special educational needs are a problem to be solved. The problems that exist are because of a system-level failure to equip schools to meet the needs of children and to support parents through the process of managing everything. I put that clearly on the record.

There are wider conversations to be had about the prevalence of special educational needs that are being identified. The inquiry has not had any sense of anyone trying to dodge having a conversation; rather, it is about what we have the capacity to manage. It is a hugely significant issue that goes beyond the remit of the Education Committee. Our inquiry could become massively distracted if we try to unpick that issue in this forum, because we do not have the resources to do so. As the Chair of the Committee and the lead on the inquiry, I put it on record that it is not the children who are presenting a problem to the system: the problem is the system. It is not equipping and supporting schools, and it is not dealing with some of the strategic issues.

Mr Baker: Thank you, Chris. You have covered a lot. A lot of school leaders tell me that they are overwhelmed by the pace and scale of the proposals, consultations and reforms coming from the Minister of Education. Do you agree?

Mr Donnelly: There is a lot being done across the system. I appreciate that schools are coming out of an era of industrial action that went on for a number of years. Elements of some of the innovations are quite useful. There is the principle of re-professionalising the profession through teacher ed. For example, the focus on signs of reading at primary-school level is excellent. The difficulty that I have, however — it may speak to your point — is that there is a lot going on.

A former principal of St Louise's College on the Falls Road — I forget her name, but she was a nun — had a famous saying that a number of teachers who taught under her for years repeated to me: "Do less. Do it better". The problem that we see in education is that we do not go a week without hearing about a new consultation. Primary schools are being hit with the return of assessments at the end of Key Stages. It would be better if we were to focus on a number of initiatives and allow them to bed in, particularly those that seem to have greatest value and worth. Speak to the professionals. They will tell you to focus on the initiatives that will help develop the professional competencies of staff. That is particularly apt, considering that all the stuff that we have been talking about over the past 45 minutes is also coming into play in schools.

I am fearful that there is, to use a phrase that ties in with the professional focus, cognitive overload. Schools are being hit with too much at the one time. It would be much better if we were to take a step back and look at some of the innovations that the Minister is introducing on re-professionalising the profession, on learning and on teacher ed and perhaps another few and have a longer time frame for introducing the others. Even suspend them for a period. That would be welcome across the profession. It would allow people to breathe a bit and instead focus on aspects of the innovations that are being rolled out.

Mr Baker: Thank you, Chris. A lot of the young people and parents whom I talk to are really worried about the direction of travel that the Department and the Minister are taking. That direction seems to be more system-focused than child-focused. Do you agree? For the past 45 minutes, we have talked about the difficulties that our primary schools and post-primary schools that are doing the heaviest lifting face. If children get to the end of their education pathway and there is one high-stakes exam period, what chance do our children with additional needs who have gone through the system in a school that has been carrying so much weight have?

Mr Donnelly: The high-stakes exam period at the end of their education probably speaks more to A-level provision. Again, it is a consultation, so it is an issue that is being discussed. Declaring my hand as a primary-school principal, with my expertise, I am most comfortable speaking about the primary-school end of things. I have heard from colleagues in post-primary schools that they are looking at that. There may be concerns. In the post-primary sector, schools that have worked tremendously hard to ensure that children of all academic abilities leave school with academic accreditations and qualifications often rely on qualifications for which there is ongoing assessment. Moving away from that model may make it much more difficult for the heavy-lifting schools to do what we are trying to do, which is to prepare our children for the world after schooling.

Mr Baker: Thank you.

Mrs Mason: Thank you very much, Chris, for giving of your time. We heard from SENCOs last week, and a lot of what you say marries with what they told us; in fact, some of what they said was quite frightening. We hear from the Department and the EA about the LIT model. The feeling is that they are hanging their hat on that model to support schools. For the LITs, we already know that the Department of Health is not at the table.

I hope that you can clarify a couple of things for us. I was told last week that the EA sent an email to schools asking them to detail their point of contact in the EA for each department. One of the requests was to state who their LIT contact is. We were told that 74% of SENCOs have said that they have not been given their LIT contact yet. If that is the model that schools are expected to go with now, is that acceptable?

Mr Donnelly: I appreciate that some people will have gone through a process at a bureaucratic level and concluded that we need to repackage things. There is a really simple litmus test. You have professional teachers who provide peripatetic support through the autism advisory and intervention service, the literacy service or the sensory service.

The simple litmus test is this: prior to the new model coming out, how much one-to-one time did they have with each child to try to develop them and meet their needs? Post the LIT model coming into effect, how much time do the same professional teachers have when they are out of class and are supposed to be there to give support to the school to meet the additional specific needs of children? Everyone whom I talk to — the teachers — tells me that they have a fraction of the time that they had before. They are being repurposed to fulfil what is almost an admin role that is being written up as "advice and guidance". That is a phrase that will soon become a derogatory term in schools.

My teachers do not need to get an action plan from somebody else that tells them what they need to do with one child while they are teaching the other 29 children in the class. The whole point of having the peripatetic service was to provide additional support, almost like tuition. I first heard that concern from those involved in the LITs. I talked to other principals and to SENCOs, who were hearing it right away. People were saying, "I am qualified. I came to the literacy service because I wanted to be involved with children and give them more time". Those people are being pulled back, which needs to be looked at because it is a really serious issue.

We do not need more action plans, consultations and evaluations. We need more people, if there are professional teachers out of class, dedicating more time to meeting the needs of children. Everything that this meeting has been about is an acknowledgement that there are greater needs. We do not need more bureaucracy; we need more people at the coalface trying to make a difference.

The system is still in its infancy, but it needs to be looked at really quickly. That is not coming from class teachers; it comes from those who are involved.

Mrs Mason: Chris, I could not agree more. We have heard from people who are involved in those LITs, and they say the same thing. One said that they had seen only two children in this school year. That is fundamentally wrong.

On the advice that has been given, do any of your teachers or classroom assistants have time to spend one-on-one with children? We are being told that that is what the literacy teachers are supposed to do. If they cannot find a teacher, they have to find a classroom assistant, and, if they cannot find a classroom assistant, they have to go to another class and find a classroom assistant who can deliver it. Do you have any free staff who could deliver it?

Mr Donnelly: Schools are incredibly resourceful human institutions. At the end of the day, we are there to try to meet the needs of kids. I often pay classroom assistants and teachers to stay behind. You do different things to meet the needs after school, but that is a drop in the ocean. That is not a professional teacher coming in to deliver the provision; it is not a substitute.

We need what was previously in place. I have a class teacher who has four classroom assistants in the room with him and a number of other children who are on PLPs. That is the scenario across many schools; it is not uncommon any more. That teacher relied on and the system needed the peripatetic support to provide additional support to meet those children's needs. Any new model that takes away from the most consequential engagement — that between the teacher and the child — needs to be looked at urgently.

Mrs Mason: We have heard that there are teething problems, but we also hear that there are systemic problems. We have heard that literacy teachers are being asked to perform a call-centre role by answering the phone and the SEN helpline. That is not teaching children, nor is it meeting their needs.

Mr Donnelly: It is disturbing.

Mr Middleton: Thanks, Chris. This session has been really insightful. A lot of my questions have been asked, and I am conscious that the Minister is due in. Important as this subject is — we do not want to curtail it — a lot of the questions have been answered.

We hear the bureaucracy point time and time again from parents, SENCOs and community groups, and now we have heard it from you, as a principal. It has been well aired, and it needs to be addressed. The point about education not ending at the school gates is really important, particularly in tackling the underachievement piece.

You clarified for Michelle what you meant in your paper by:

With regard to the role of the community and voluntary sector, we hear from some of the groups that do fantastic work, particularly with those who have special educational needs. How valuable are they to the running of your school? Could more be done in partnership with those community and voluntary bodies, given the financial constraints in the Education Department?

Mr Donnelly: Organisations play a great role in the community. Earlier, I made the point that we needed to ask questions about what is happening in society. That is where it is most important, Gary. The community cohesion that can be provided, sustained and developed by those organisations is really important, because, often, what has happened is that parents have lost community support or intergenerational support. As a collective society, we have all lost out because of that. We should be trying to, in a targeted way, invest in those organisations to provide qualitative support to children outside of school hours, whether it is in a pastoral way or through academic support or sports provision.

I will say this about what a school can do: five days a week, my teachers volunteer until 4.00 pm to take sports teams. That does not happen in every school any more because, in a lot of schools, the staff say, "No. I am using this time for my admin because the system is making me do it. Therefore, I am not giving up my time". What we lose as a community from that is immense.

Let us talk about male role models. I have two Gaelic football coaches — two guys: one for the girls and one for the boys — who take the kids two days a week. I know the backgrounds of some of those kids and what they are getting out of that. We see the comments that they make and the change in [Inaudible.]

You could say, "Sure you could get a private company to come in at 3.00 pm". That would not be the same: it would be a coach coming in who has no connection with the child. We need to protect what is valuable. Actually, we first need to recognise what is valuable, talk to the people who are telling you what is valuable and then see how we can protect that. The school cannot do it alone; you need the community organisations and the sporting organisations, regardless of whether they are rugby, the GAA or soccer. They can help. I have them all in with me, and it makes a difference.

Mr Middleton: That would go some way to addressing the wider societal challenges that you are talking about. That is fine. Thank you.

Ms Hunter: I just have the one question, you will be happy to know. Chris, thank you so much for being here. I can tell your passion and expertise when it comes to supporting the children.

My question is about emotionally based school avoidance. I have spoken to parents in my constituency and heard that, oftentimes, when a child has autism, ADHD or severe anxiety, they miss school. I was told that, when the SENCOs in the school tried to get adequate support to keep the child in school, they did not get it and felt totally left behind by the EA, the Department and the Minister. I imagine that you have seen that in your time as principal over the past 26 years or so. What one ask would you have from the Education Authority to improve its engagement and get those children back into the learning environment and back into classrooms and to get parents the support that they need?

Mr Donnelly: On that, I will be clear: I did not support adding the new attendance code that came into effect over the summer. I will tell you why: if a child is not in school, they are not in school and are missing the important opportunity to develop not just academically but socially. I am very familiar with that scenario; I deal with it regularly. What we say to parents goes along the lines of, "If we can get the child in, we can help. If you are not pushing through to get the child into school, the same scenario will continue to arise". That is a delicate conversation that is had regularly. That is where the societal conversation needs to be had because we are getting more and more emotion and anxiety-based concerns. I have dealt with that throughout my career. You get it a lot among P7 pupils at this time of year due to anxiety about the transfer test. I have dealt with that throughout my career, because I was a transfer teacher before I was a vice principal and a principal, and I have had that conversation with parents, including in the recent past, and said, "I have experienced this. This is what it is". We are now seeing it in P1 and P2 pupils as well. That may be a different conversation, and, sometimes, you may have to say to parents, "Listen, you need to let us take the child off you", because, if we have the child in school, the internal resilience will get the opportunity that it needs to grow. One of the uncomfortable conversations that we have to have is about the place of resilience in the development of a child and how we help that.

As a system, how do we support parents and children who might need to be signposted to counselling? That is a need. How do you support schools to provide greater nurture and sensory provision? I organise timetable provision for the sensory rooms and for nurture provision. Schools have to fundraise to get that, because you cannot just get mental health counsellors in. Schools will be proactive, but we need the system to almost work with parents and say, "Listen, the school is the best place to deal with the emotion-based issues".

Ms Hunter: I saw recently that one set of Northern Irish parents were convicted over their child's non-attendance and spent up to £30,000 on legal fees and on going to court. There have been over 316 cases in which parents have been taken to court over non-attendance. You are right that it speaks to issues in schools and with our young people, but it is also about the role that society can play. Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you for your time.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thanks, members. Everyone has worked together on timings. Thank you, Chris, for your evidence. As David referenced, even your initial remarks contained a huge amount to unpack, and all members will want to listen back to that and look at the record. That was really helpful evidence for our inquiry. It has been so helpful to hear from a school leader and get that insight. Thank you for your time.