Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): From the Children's Law Centre, I welcome Rachel Hogan, special educational needs representative; Kathryn Stevenson, solicitor and head of legal services; Liam Mackle, advice manager; and Diane Hammond, legal adviser. You are all very welcome. Some of you are familiar presenters to the Committee and others might not have been here so regularly, but we are very glad to have you here today. Your evidence and input is really important given your role and where you sit in the SEN system. It is really important that we hear from you. I will hand over to you for an initial presentation of up to 10 minutes. As is normal, we are running behind schedule, so I asked members to work with me on timings and get to questions as quickly and succinctly as possible. Over to you. Rachel, are you opening?

Ms Rachel Hogan (Children's Law Centre): Yes. Thank you very much, Chair. We are delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to the SEN inquiry, which we think is a really important piece of work. The Committee has made a valuable contribution to scrutinising the sector, which helps us in our work in advocating for children with special educational needs.

I want to let you know how much experience you have sitting with you today. We have all been around for a while in the Children's Law Centre; there is good staff retention. Combined, there is 82 years of experience sitting in front of you, and the majority of that has been focused on special educational needs.

In the last reporting year, SEND law accounted for over 70% of all the education queries that were raised with the Children's Law Centre, and SEND law made up 50% of our entire advice service. We cover all children's rights. That has been a pattern, and I am sure that a large proportion of the queries that you receive in your constituency work are about special educational needs. We also find that, as well as the volume, there is a complexity to the cases that come to us. They are very difficult to resolve these days because of the lack of resource and specialist capacity in the system.

On the DE and Education Authority (EA) transformation process the questions that we have are: has anything changed, and is anything going to change? There is significant potential for positive change, and we are very concerned about making sure that that happens and that we do not miss this fantastic opportunity of all working together to try to make the system in Northern Ireland the best that it can possibly be. We have the benefit of the existing legal framework having really clear legal duties and being robust and fit for purpose. We know from reports that it is the operation more than the legal position that needs to be transformed.

It took decades for the SEND system to slide into preventable chaos, and we, over our 82 combined years, have sat and witnessed the system slide into complete meltdown to the point that of not being fit for purpose. We were interested to hear the Committee's evidence session with the EA last week in which it tried to tell us a bit about the work that it is doing to turn that around. That is no small feat.

There has long been an urgent need to align the capacity of children's special educational support services with the level and type of presenting needs. The crux of the problem over the past two decades has always been that children could not access specialist support services when they needed them. That problem remains the case today. Despite quite a number of years of transformation and many meetings, advisory groups, reference groups, processes and reviews, we have not moved forward.

In our briefing paper, which is published on our website for anyone who wants to look at it, I have included a comparison between the old or current SEN pipeline and the new pipeline. If you look at those side by side, you can see very clearly that there is very little difference in the processes. First, the child gets school provision. In the new system, the next stage might be that they get a personal learning plan. Then, they will hit a gatekeeper of some description before they can move to a statement. In the old system, the educational psychologist was the gatekeeper. In the new system, there is a form for referral for involvement, and an EA moderation panel is the gatekeeper. You still have a gatekeeper, ultimately, and you still have finite resources that have to be allocated.

I was flabbergasted to learn that flat funding is allocated to local impact teams (LITs). The local impact teams are part of the crux of the matter because they provide early intervention. There used to be eight separate services, but there are now multidisciplinary services within the EA. In the midst of dismantling everything and trying to put it back together into the new teams, we find that the service has not been prioritised for additional funding, and so the capacity is the same as it was before. If the capacity is as it was before and the complexity of need is increasing, which it is, how can the new system possibly work? That is our concern. We really want to support the EA: we know its staff are working really hard to get the new system up and running, and we want to support them and the Department in that. However, we have a huge concern that, if the local impact teams do not have the capacity to match their service to the need that exists, we will be going nowhere with the new system and children will end up statemented. That will mean that we still have a high number of statements rather than earlier intervention.

Over the past decade, the proportion of children with statements has gone from about 22% of pupils on the SEN register to 42%. Within the pool of children with SEN, therefore, there has been a doubling in the number of children with statements. It had stayed static at around 70,000, give or take, for about 10 years, although I will not go into the ins and outs of that. You can see that the need has become more complex. Why? In our view, the complexity of that need is largely driven by unmet need at the earlier stages, which ends up pushing children into stage 3.

The Education Authority will want to start pushing children back towards stage 2, which is earlier intervention. In theory, that is the right thing to do. However, if you do that at a time when the capacity is not there to meet the need, you are taking children out of statements and putting them into a system that cannot meet their needs. We must avoid that at all costs, which is why this process is so important.

We have been taken through the request for involvement form. In our view, once the special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs) get used to them, the form and the process will be relatively straightforward and well set out. There is exceptionality in the system, so if pupils come along and need a statement immediately, they do not have to jump through all the hoops. However, in the vast majority of cases, there will be hoops to be jumped through. The difficulty and concern with the new process is about the evidence that must be gathered and how it must be gathered before you open up the portal and start entering the information.

In our paper, we have compared what evidence the current code of practice requires with that required under the graduated response framework. There are links in the paper to what I can only describe as very lengthy tick-box exercises that SENCOs might have to go through before they can ask for external help from the Education Authority. We need to get away from a place where there is an abundance of boxes to be ticked and into a place where we have a child-centred and child-led process in which needs are identified quickly and met. That is what the current system requires. The Department's vision — the right support at the right place at the right time and by the right person — is the exact same vision, albeit in slightly different language, that is in the current law, so there is no change in that ideal and in what we want to achieve.

Teacher workload is a huge issue. If we do not bring our teaching workforce with us on the new system, it will not be implemented properly. We will talk to that through some of the advice examples that we have.

We have also outlined in our paper some of the positives of the EA local impact teams, including the single point of referral; a good audit trail; a removal of the educational psychology gatekeeper; being able to implement better a team around the child approach; alignment with health trust areas, albeit we do not have the health input at the moment; and, more importantly, the increased focus on the needs of SEN and including children with SEN.

The drawback that we are worried about is the potential to repeat the mistakes of the past by slowing the flow of children down the pipeline towards being registered as having special educational needs, getting support and a statement. To echo what the Education Authority said in its evidence, if we repeat the mistakes of the past, we will get the same outcomes. We do not want that, so we will have to do something different.

To know whether it is different, we need full transparency on how resources are being allocated. We also need full transparency on the levels of unmet need and how they match up with the pathways of support. If there are waiting lists, we need to know how they are being managed and prioritised. In the past, there have been ways of prioritising from the waiting lists the oldest children or those with a statement. On a number of occasions, I have asked for the moderation handbook that staff use to filter those requests, but I have not yet received it. As of yesterday, I was promised that I would receive it. We would welcome that transparency. Open the doors and the windows, and let us all look in and help the Education Authority and the Department get it right.

Data is really important, and it should be published regularly, not to batter the EA but to support it in improving its performance for children and young people. We also need to see enhanced children's services cooperation, and we have outlined a number of interfaces with Health. I will not list them now because we are short on time, but there are numerous interfaces with Health, not just through LITs, but throughout the child's journey, from conception to development in the womb and throughout preschool, nursery, primary school, secondary school and the transitions in between. Those interfaces need to be better managed and more coherent.

The unmet need will continue to escalate if it is left unchecked, and we will not see any change in the number of statutory assessments that are being requested and the number of statements that are being produced. If the system is not right, we see lots of children out of school or on reduced timetables, which is completely unacceptable under the law. It is a breach of human rights to be denied the right to education, and the EA is failing in its mandatory legal duty to provide other forms of education if the child is not able to go to school. We know of children who have been out of school for years, and Committee members, as MLAs, will know of such cases. The majority of those children are disabled, so we are treating disabled children differently from how we treat non-disabled children. That is fundamentally wrong.

SEN provision is a matter of intense public interest. It is essential that the ongoing processes are subject to significant, ongoing public scrutiny. The success of reform will depend on significant and sustainable funding, transparent processes, enhanced cooperation between children's services providers and a child-centred approach that promotes equality of opportunity for children with special educational needs. I open the floor to questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you, Rachel. Thank you all for attending and for the briefing paper, which, as always, was thorough and a very good starting point for today's evidence session. I had questions that I was planning to ask, but when I listened to your evidence, I began thinking about other things. That is always the challenge with SEN: it is such a big area and so much is interconnected that it is hard to deal with any part of it in isolation.

I want to make an observation and check that my understanding is correct. There is, sometimes, a narrative that there has been an exponential rise in the number of children presenting with SEN. Your evidence suggests that that number has been quite static over the past 10 years and that the rise has been in the number of children with statements. We need to be careful with our language, so that clarification was really helpful. That leads me to a theme on the direction of travel with transformation that came through in the EA's evidence: we should try to statement children less frequently and deliver appropriate early intervention sooner. What is your assessment of that? You have referenced it in your evidence, and, from your legal perspective, if a child needs a statement it is their legal right to receive one, and I absolutely concur with that. However, what is your assessment of the EA's position that we should statement less frequently and provide appropriate interventions earlier to reform the system?

Ms Hogan: In a system that is properly funded and up to full capacity, that is absolutely the right approach. In a system that is not properly funded and up to capacity, there is an inherent danger in that approach because you will be taking children out of legally enforceable stages — if you have a statement, you have legal enforceability — and putting them into virtually unenforceable waiting-list positions in which that help cannot be pursued as efficiently. Obviously, if the system is working properly, early intervention will kick in; you will get clear assessments of what the child needs early; and their needs will be met. Some of those children will not go on to require a statement. You will always have a group of children who do require a statement. If the child needs it, that is what they should have. The law provides for that, and they will have it because we have legal redress if that is not done. In order to move children into stage 2, however, you need to have capacity to meet their needs. Without having done that yet, we do not have capacity. The evidence from the Education Authority was very honest, open and clear on that. It cannot meet capacity. It is understaffed — I think that it is looking for 48 more staff just to get to its baseline — and it does not have the necessary financial resources. If we handed it a big pile of money today, it would not be able to scale up quickly enough. How will it scale up its number of staff in order to match need? We have to be very careful about moving children out of stage 3 if we cannot move them somewhere else. The answer is to create the pathways that they can go down. That is the design of the system, but it has always been, so what has changed about the EA's capacity that means that it will be able to meet the need that exists? That is my question. I do not see it.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): That is really helpful. This session is really important, because, as an organisation, you play a key role in the system. You are often the last line of defence when the system has not worked for children and families. It is really good to get on the record that, in principle, your perspective is that there needs to be earlier access to pupil support services. Your briefing was clear on that. If that means that a child then does not need a statement, that is OK. When a child does need a statement, they should have the right to get one.

With regard to the point at which the statutory processes kick in and a child receives a statement, the EA said in its evidence that there is a need to reform the process to move away from the default position that one-to-one support from an adult is the right thing to do. As MLAs, we hear that that causes real anxiety among parents because they feel that they have fought to get that support in the system. The EA was very clear, however, that it believes that there is a better way in which to do that to ensure that children's needs are met. What is your assessment of where that sits? Once we reach that statementing process, do you think that it is necessary that the statement mandates adult support, or should it do something else?

Ms Hogan: It is fairly straightforward: the statement is a statement of special educational needs and special educational provision to meet those needs. Therefore, the provision that the child needs, whatever that is, must, by law, be specified in part 3 of the statement. If it is not specific — for example, if you say, "Here is a bunch of group provisions that everybody can access" — it will not be lawful. One-to-one classroom assistance is not the answer to every question. There needs to be other approaches. There are pilots that have been put forward. We need to make evidence-based decisions. We also need to properly skill up our classroom assistants and really acknowledge what they do daily. Many schools would fall apart if we took their classroom assistants away. What are they doing? Are they being professionally developed? Are they being properly paid? Are their terms and conditions good enough? What else can they do? Can they do things differently? Can they be deployed in a different way? The important thing is that there is honesty and truthfulness about what the child is accessing so that, whatever they are getting — whatever that looks like — is specific on the statement and, if the parent does not agree with it, they can appeal it and an independent tribunal can scrutinise it.

Again, if we are in a more secure position where there are a number of options, and they are working for children, parents will not be one bit worried about what the statement says; they will be more than happy if their child is getting what they need. The reason that there is such a focus on the provision of one-to-one classroom assistance — we focus on it a lot — is because it is the only thing that you can get at the minute that you can enforce. You can hold that piece of paper and say, "I am entitled to this, and I am not getting it". We need to move away from that, to a point, but we must still specify in statements. If work is ongoing about how we do that, we would like to be invited to the table, please, to talk about how that should happen.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): If the EA, as it has said in evidence, is looking to develop a new support model for children with a statement, it is important that organisations such as yourselves and, I would imagine, parent advocacy groups are involved in the discussion on what that should look like.

Ms Hogan: Where we can come in is with our understanding of the law. At the minute, the Education Authority very often does not comply with the law in its draft statements. I do not think that any of us have ever seen a draft statement about which we have said, "That's grand. You don't need to edit that". We have always had to advise it to tighten up the specification. We spend a lot of time doing that, and the EA spends a lot of time taking calls from us, the Special Educational Needs Advice Centre (SENAC), the Children's Commissioner and everyone else who looks at this. It could cut out a lot of unnecessary work by agreeing, in an open and transparent way, what a specification ought to look like and what it is providing someone with.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): That is helpful. There is lots more that I could ask, but lots of people around the table want to ask questions, so I will open up to the floor. First, I have an indication from Cathy.

Sorry, it is the Deputy Chair first, and then Cathy. Apologies. Occasionally, I like to promote people in Committee.

Mr Sheehan: Thanks. Rachel, in your presentation, you flagged the dangers of repeating the mistakes of the old system in the new system, particularly when it comes to gatekeeping and access to pupil services when needs emerge. What can be done to avoid making the same mistakes again?

Ms Hogan: A child-centred approach has to be taken. At the moment, the approach is very process-heavy, with a lot of bureaucracy. Teachers and parents can be sitting with a child in front of them who has needs. They can see those needs and know that they need to be identified and assessed, but then they hit a wall of bureaucracy, processes and criteria — things that they have to do. It is like a full-time admin job. That is not child-centred. The hope is that the local impact teams and any other intervention can bring an approach where they look at the child to see what they need and provide that. They will not be able to do that if they are not resourced to respond. If the profile of needs in the population changes, the local impact teams and other services need to be able to flex. They need to have some wriggle room in their capacity to respond to changes. They have not had that up to now. We do not want to see the introduction of layers and layers of operational criteria, and the graduated response framework is in danger of becoming that. I know that that is not the intention behind it. The principle behind it is sound, but what happens in practice is different — we will talk to that at some point today. No child should be leaving a system to which they have been referred for help without some sort of pathway. Very often, we just get, "No, you don't meet the criteria. Have a nice day". Then we just request a statutory assessment. We will probably get that, and then we are into the statementing route. No child should be leaving without some sort of help.

The other thing that we need to do is to maintain specialism. The sensory service has managed to preserve its specialism and to stay outside the LITs. Across the LITs, they do not have full specialism in place in every area. We need to make sure that people who provide help to children are specialists and know how to advise the school, the parent and the child on how they can improve their situation. It needs to be outcomes-focused, which I think is the intention. Ultimately, I come back to the fact that, if the system cannot meet capacity, we will end up completely repeating what we did before.

Mr Sheehan: When it is clear that a child needs a pathway, the EA does not always provide it. Take the case of Aurelia, for which you were a great advocate. It was known from when she was a baby that she was going to need support throughout her school career, yet that was not done. She missed many months of schooling because the EA had not made the preparations for her pathway. Is that still a problem? If it is, how can it be resolved?

Ms Hogan: It is still a problem. I am conscious that my colleagues will have a lot more important things to say about cases, but I have a whole list of cases that I could tell you about of children with complex disabilities who have not been able to access their schooling because they do not have a registered nurse to look after them or they do not have access to a wheelchair. I am glad that you mentioned Aurelia, because Aurelia is an insightful young woman. Recently, she said to me that she would never like to blame the people in the EA who work at the coalface to try to sort everything out for everybody. She had not heard anything that was said at last week's evidence session — she was not aware of it — but she said, "It's not their fault. They're working very hard and have too many cases. I am just a burden". She has been left to feel that she is a burden.

Mr Sheehan: That is an indictment of the whole system.

Ms Hogan: It is. It is so sad. We are a couple of years on, because she is in third year now. It leaves a scar and and a mark. It leaves harm and damage. We have, collectively, numerous cases of children who are still not in school so far this term. Are they feeling that they are a burden, that they are not wanted, that they are different or not quite as good as everyone else? You have raised a good point. Happy birthday, Aurelia, if you are watching this.

Mr Sheehan: I want to ask you one other question about provision in the Irish-medium sector. We have heard evidence from the Irish-medium sector. Yesterday, we spoke to one of the SENCOs from Coláiste Feirste. It is clear that there is no bespoke provision for children who are involved in immersion education. The SENCO told us about an educational psychologist coming into the school and saying, "Oh, this is great that the kids can speak Irish and blah blah blah". It is obvious, however, that that psychologist has not been given any training in immersion pedagogy. It is also the case that, where there is special provision for literacy in English-medium schools from primary 2, because there is no bespoke provision in Irish-medium schools, that provision does not kick in until primary 4, because that is when children in Irish-medium schools start learning English. There are all those issues in the Irish-medium sector. What can be done about that?

Ms Hogan: There are inequalities inherent in that, particularly when you have a duty to promote Irish-medium education. It comes back to the point about specialism. You need the appropriate specialisms across the system in order to deal with children's individual profiles of need. If a person is immersed in Irish and Irish is their first language, however, it is not much use going in to assess them in a different language, because you are not going to get the right evidence back in order to inform the assessment. The answer to the question is to ensure that appropriate specialisms and diagnostic assessment tools are in place that can be implemented in the Irish language, particularly in the early years when the children are not learning English. Obviously, interventions have to be tailored to the specific needs of the child and the profile of the population. Again, that comes back to planning, as well as consultation. Only those who are involved in Irish-medium education can really explain what is needed. Similarly, only those who are disabled can explain what is needed. We need to speak to the affected people in order to know that.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I will now bring in the newly appointed Deputy Chair, Cathy. [Laughter.]

Mrs Mason: I will start off by thanking Rachel and the rest of the team so much for everything that you do, not just for today's session. I know that you guys are a lifeline for so many families. I just put that on record at the outset. In your evidence, Rachel, you mentioned a few times how, in theory, everybody wants this to work. In theory, it sounds like people are doing the right things. The reality, however, is so much different. We are hearing from schools, but also from members of LITs, about their difficulties in trying to operate in this space. That is why, when senior EA officials come in, we are asking them to listen to what is happening out on the ground. Thanks for your presentation, because it reiterates that.

I want to ask a specific question about pathways. We are being told that there are now already more children getting one-to-one support through those pathways. The evidence we are hearing, however, is the polar opposite of that, which is that children are not getting the one-to-one support. Let us use literacy as an example. What are you hearing around that?

Ms Hogan: I will ask Liam, our advice manager, to answer that. He is a big champion for literacy and he does quite a lot of casework on it.

Mr Liam Mackle (Children's Law Centre): I am assisting a number of children who are receiving literacy provision, but that is statutory literacy provision. We have had to go to tribunals. I was recently at a special educational needs and disability tribunal (SENDIST) in relation to a child for whom we secured literacy support. We also ensured that the service would not end until everybody — the parents, the school and the service — agreed that the child had made sufficient progress, and that it was not tied into the 12-week model whereby, no matter what you have done, you move on and go back to the start of the process again. We were able to secure that. It is interesting to note that, at that tribunal — it was only about six weeks ago — there seemed to be confusion among the EA staff who were there, including some LIT staff, as to whether you can access two types of support at the same time from a LIT. Obviously, everything is very new. In one case at the minute, I am advising a parent about a complaint to the board of governors of a school. One thing that we are concerned may happen is that, because of this new bureaucracy, new forms and new online stuff in schools, there comes a reluctance to deal with it; there is a turn-off factor with it. In this case, the child had a number of difficulties, each one on its own potentially a special educational need and a learning difficulty. That woman was given a list for her child to go to the GP because he did not have a diagnosis. It is one of those cases where, if he does not have a diagnosis, there is nothing we can do. However, he clearly had a list of significant difficulties. The school was actually making provision, so he was receiving some one-to-one support from a classroom assistant, but he was not on the SEN register and did not have a personal learning plan. I wrote to the SENCO and got a response that did not satisfy me at all, so we are now proceeding to a complaint because I want to dig into that. I want to see if that is a reluctance to engage with those new processes, because in a number of conversations with teachers, like yourselves, I am certainly getting the impression that there is nearly a fear factor with the new processes.

As people said earlier, we do not want to repeat the failures of the past. It used to be the case that children sat at stage 2 before they moved to stage 3. Children sat for years, and the emotion that we have come across during my 25 years in the centre is parental frustration at the pace at which children's needs are dealt with. I do not want this new system, with all the potential that it has, to become a new model of the old system, whereby the response framework, LIT referrals and all of that become a new block.

Mrs Mason: That specific case is interesting, Liam. We are hearing that for a lot of children who are on pathway 2, which requires a classroom assistant, the EA literacy teacher provides support to a classroom assistant or teacher to provide one-to-one support, but they are not hitting the pathway 3 criteria and are not able to get one-to-one support from a literacy teacher.

I want to ask what your view is on something. I heard recently about a case where there is no classroom assistant in the class, just the teacher, and the literacy teacher, who wholeheartedly wants to provide one-to-one support for the child but the system is not allowing her to do it, was told to find a classroom assistant from another class to provide that. No classroom assistant was available in another class, so they were told to find a P7 child to come and provide that one-to-one support. What is your view of that?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Just briefly, Liam.

Mr Mackle: That sounds pretty absurd to me. I heard you put that question to the EA last week. I cannot countenance any circumstances in which anybody would think that that was reasonable. It is not something that I have come across. Classroom assistants in schools are, by and large, attached to a pupil. If that classroom assistant is being taken to provide one-to-one support to a pupil who does not have a statement, the other child's needs are not being met, and we see that time and time again. As somebody who works in the field, if I had a child with difficulties, I would far rather be a parent whose child is receiving statutory provision where I have statutory rights and the EA has statutory duties, rather than relying on guidance and guidelines. That is just the state of affairs at the minute.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I will have to draw a line there, Cathy.

Mrs Mason: Just a comment, Chair, to say that I am not in any way blaming that literacy teacher, because they are under pressure to find somebody else to provide one-to-one support when they wholeheartedly want to provide that support themselves, but the system is not allowing them to do so.

Mr Brooks: I join you in saying happy birthday to Aurelia. Also a rarity, I probably agree with Pat that it is an indictment that she feels a burden, but also it is generous of her to understand that people in those roles are working to the best of their ability for people who need the help. For us, it will be a complex challenge in the future. We all need to engage in looking at a sustainable future for a high-quality service, but a service to be provided. I understand why a parent will fight for and want one-to-one support and will want a statement to say that that is what they can access, but I think that we all know that that will be very challenging in the future, particularly if we see a rise in numbers again at some stage.

That was just a comment, but I have one question. Your briefing has been very comprehensive . We talked last week about maybe trying to bring Health officials to this Committee. You mentioned in your briefing that Health has sort of drawn back a little bit from its initial commitment with regard to the impact teams. What engagement have you had with Department of Health officials? Resources are clearly a problem for them; I am not trying to make a political point about that. Is there a willingness or a push to try and properly integrate, or is it very much being stonewalled? When we have Education officials here, they seem to be resistant to saying anything negative about colleagues in other Departments, and I understand that. Again, it is not about personalising it to anybody; it is about the system. You talked about the potential of the new system and the impact teams, which is great, but if we do not have those allied health professionals properly integrated into the system, they are not impact teams at all. It is just two Departments doing what they have always done.

Ms Hogan: Absolutely. I am going to make a very brief comment, and then I will pass to Kathryn, because this is her specialist area the moment. I think that there is tension between the different Departments because of the resourcing situation and the pressure on all of them. Education wants Health to come and help them, but Health is probably thinking, "Well, that is Education. Why do you not do as much as you can?" Health actually does a lot in the education space. Education is having a crisis; it is open to proliferation of spending and so on, and Health maybe does not know what is going on and how it is going to resource that. They are not acting together. I do not think that there is an unwillingness; they do work together, but an awful lot more needs to be done to make it coherent. There are some very complex children with special educational needs who cannot go to school unless there is a nurse with them. For example, there is a child who has a declaration of a breach of her human rights, whom I have spoken about before in the Committee. She cannot go to school this Friday because there is no registered nurse available to be there and make sure that she is not at risk from stopping to breathe. That service has been very patchy, and all her respite has basically stopped. That is one example, but I will pass to Kathryn, who might have a further comment on that.

Mrs Kathryn Stevenson (Children's Law Centre): Yes. If we go back and look at the legal responsibilities and duties of Health, it is quite helpful. We have looked at it and considered it over many years. Under the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1996, section 14, there is a clear duty on health trusts to comply with the Education Authority requests and give information and advice within the statutory assessment process, to guide and support the provision and, indeed, the review of what is provided in the statement, as an ongoing commitment. The Education (Special Educational Needs) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2005 also deal with the requirement to give effective medical advices in that process, and the original code of practice is extremely clear about the responsibility to cooperate. It says that effective action on behalf of children with SEN will often depend on close cooperation between Education and the health trusts, which have statutory duties to help one another. That has always been the case, and all the medical evidence that is provided within that process should guide what is in the child's assessment and statement. Health can give the proper advice on personal care, the correct equipment and support that should be available to a child in school and, indeed, how to manage complex behaviours and all of those other things in a school context.

Health has an extremely important role, and always has had. If it chooses to back out because of a budgetary consideration or scarce resources, then I do not think that that is appropriate. We would never agree that it was appropriate. Its role is crucial already, but more than that, the Children's Law Centre held an event on 24 November looking at what the Children’s Services Co Operation Act (Northern Ireland) 2015 has delivered 10 years on. It was introduced in 2015, and we are 10 years on. A lot of evidence was presented. The event was attended by 100 people from the statutory sector, the Department of Health, the Department of Finance and the Department of Education, who gave very compelling information about very good, ongoing collaborative efforts and strategies that have happened. The point is, however, that it we see it as an extremely important piece of legislation to bring this further. The SEN transformation agenda and the reform programme are an excellent opportunity to highlight the merits and benefits of the Children's Services Co-operation Act. There is a mandatory statutory duty to cooperate.

Mr Brooks: I agree —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): A very brief final point, David.

Mr Brooks: I agree, and it is an opportunity, if the resource is there. Your role, rightly — we are talking about Health and Education — is to push for that child's rights. You have to deliver that, and that is it. When that hard edge comes up against the hard edge of budgetary issues, however, that pushes us all into a situation where the child ends up being failed.

Mrs Stevenson: If I could counter that, just to say —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I apologise, Kathryn. Very, very briefly, because we are running over time.

Mrs Stevenson: I will be very brief. That was discussed. Department of Finance officials were there. They issued guidance in April for all Departments and public authorities around how to budget and get value for money. The more collaboration that there is, the more that we need to look at the longer-term objectives and the financial and economic gains of getting this right. There is an enabling power in the legislation to pool resources and funds. That has not been brought forward in regulations yet.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Unfortunately we need to draw this to a close, Kathryn and David. We have run substantially over time on this inquiry. I want to make sure that other members get an opportunity to come in.

Mr Baker: it is absolutely heartbreaking that children with additional needs feel that they are a burden on the system, while having empathy for the people who are at the coalface. Those who are failing them, however, sit at the very top. We had senior officials at the Committee a couple weeks ago. They may have thought that I was being a bit hard on them when I was talking about reduced timetables, and they said that that was really an operational matter for schools. I have a completely different view on that, because they have the responsibility to place children with special educational needs, and they are not doing that properly. They are offering places that do not exist. We do not do that to mainstream children, so why should we do it to children with additional needs? I would like to hear your view on that. I am sick, sore and tired of senior officials, because I have lost all faith in them.

Ms Hogan: I noted the comment that reduced timetables are a delegated matter for schools, because that is incorrect. There are decisions that schools make and are responsible for where they have decided to reduce a child's timetable off their own bat. Yes, they are legally responsible for that, and it may well become disability discrimination and unofficial exclusion, if you like. The majority of cases that we are struggling with at the moment, however, are where the state, through the Education Authority, has blocked the child from attending school. If a parent stopped their child from going to school, they would be brought to court. If the Education Authority or another children's services authority blocks a child from going to school, they do not seem to be accountable for that.

I have a case involving a very vulnerable looked-after child who is in long-term foster care, who missed a year of school and missed a part of this year of school because of a lack of Health input. The EA did not put anything in place as an alternative. The EA has a mandatory legal duty under article 86 of the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 to make alternative provisions for a child who, for any reason, might miss out on school. Those children all fall within that, and the EA has that responsibility. We have legal declarations against the EA for refusing to do that. The EA knows that it has to do that, but it has not put the infrastructure in place, other than education other than at school (EOTAS) provisions or exceptional teaching arrangements — maths and English. That is not going to be any good for a child with complex needs and disabilities who cannot go to school. There is nothing there for those really disabled children. In a situation where a school will not take a child into P1 because they have a complex disability and there is no support there, the EA needs to come in and backfill that or provide support.

I have a case where a child is out of school in family intervention with social services and has not been in school for two years plus, and there is still nothing. I have a paper trail from here to last Christmas of me asking for education for that child, but it has not been provided.

I have an email in front of me today from my colleague, a mental health solicitor, that shows the EA writing to a parent, saying that their child has been facilitated to have two hours a day in school. The word used is "facilitated", as if they should be grateful that their child is getting a whole two hours a day in school. The reason why that child cannot go to school is that they have very complex behavioural needs. The environment is small and unsuitable, and the specialist provision to help them is not there.

There are lots of barriers to attendance at school that are state barriers and do not come from parents or children. I do not accept that it is delegated and a matter for schools. I accept that schools have a level of responsibility, obviously, to provide for their own pupils. I do not accept that the Education Authority does not have a legal duty. It has breached that and, for lots of people whom we work with, it is breaching it now.

Ms Diane Hammond (Children's Law Centre): I have been advising a principal on something that touches on everything that Rachel has talked about. A child in crisis who has always had difficulties around their behaviour was being supported in school, and the school recognised the triggers and could manage the behaviour. Unfortunately, the child was subject to a serious sexual assault in the community, with the result that the behaviour escalated and became more of a problem at home and at school. The child was taken into care. He is under the care of social services in a foster placement, but that is at risk of breaking down. The child has been attending school. The school is the only consistent source of support, and his siblings are at the same school. He does not understand why he has had to leave school every day and go to a stranger's house while his siblings go home.

There was a serious incident in school, and the principal felt that she had no alternative but to move to suspension, although she did not want to have to do that. He was out of school at that stage, and she called an emergency or early annual review: he is under the care of a psychiatrist, an educational psychologist and a social worker, and the principal and the parents also attended. The outcome of that was the decision that he needs a specialist placement. He needed a specialist placement long before the assault happened: the assault just magnified everything. The principal supplied all the information, and everyone around the table agreed that that was what the child needed. A place for him was identified, and it was hoped that he would move into that and come back into school after he had had that therapeutic input. However, the forms were not correctly filled in; some information was missing. It was not anything vital, and the principal was able to provide the information on the day and has subsequently offered every day to provide it, but the EA decided that it could not move forward with the placement, and the meeting has been rescheduled for four to six weeks' time. The child is in a foster placement that is at risk of breaking down. If it breaks down, because of the lack of foster placements, he will be moved out of the trust and away from school and family. That outlines the old system and the new system: there is a duty to cooperate, and the child's best interests should be at the heart of the decision-making process but they are not. The bureaucracy is winning out.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Please make a brief final comment, and we will then have to move on.

Mr Baker: This will be a quick one. The result of it is reduced timetables. When it comes to placements, in my opinion, the EA is playing a numbers game, and I am not seeing anything changing. Do you agree?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We do not have time for an answer. I was asking for a final comment because we are way over time. If you want to, please speak briefly about placements.

Mrs Stevenson: The key thing is monitoring and there being a proper duty to monitor. How many children are out of school, including the ones who have a placement but are not attending because the placement is incorrect or the services have not been delivered? Reduced timetables are not being monitored, regulated or consistently recorded. Monitoring is absolutely key to working out why it is has happened, for how long a reduced timetable has been in place and why it has not been adapted, reviewed and changed. If it is in place because a service is not there rather than being used to holistically support the child, ensuring that they are in a phased process towards being in school full time, that is not right: that is the bottom line.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you, Danny. Apologies, Kathryn. You seem to have come in at the end of each member's allocated time, and you are getting cut off.

Mrs Stevenson: No problem. It is tactical. [Laughter.]

Mrs Guy: Thanks, everybody. I am going to ask one specific question that I do not think that anybody else has asked. The Department has indicated that it will bring forward some SEN regulations by the end of the year. What is your view on the impact of that on support for children?

Ms Hogan: That is a very important question. We are busy redesigning a system based on the legislation, the code and the regulations that we have, but we are now being told that those revised draft regulations will land on your desk and, possibly, our desks by the end of this year. It has been years since they were consulted on. We had a number of criticisms of them at the time; we will have to dig those out and look at them. One of the criticisms was that, in changing the format of the statement, the Department would dilute the health duties in it. It will be interesting to see what lands on the desk. We are more than happy to come to the Committee to speak about that when it happens.

There is also a revised code of practice. When I last saw that, it looked pretty much like the graduated response framework. All that is operating without its ever having come back here. I, for one, am very confused. The whole thing is overly complicated. There are too many cooks and too many things going on. Can we please get the system stable and operating and let the people on the ground get on with the good work that they are trying to do? I will be interested to see the regulations and the code, but I am slightly concerned at the same time; that is probably the best way of putting it.

Mrs Guy: You mentioned nursing provision. Members have raised a lot of questions about nursing provision in special schools. In response to my question for written answer, the Health Minister stated:

You gave the example of Alana, who cannot go to school because she does not have appropriate —.

Ms Hogan: Yes, she cannot go on Friday because it is a Southern Health and Social Care Trust case, and the Southern Trust community children's nursing team is under extreme pressure. I have a similar case in the Northern Health and Social Care Trust, in which the child was out of school for a year. He was in and out for bits of assessments, but he was not in school. Those teams are under huge pressure. A report that looks at nursing has come out recently. It makes the fair point that a lot could be delegated. The EA and Education could take on a certain amount of it. Why should they not look after their children, having been trained to do it, with the help of Health? However, in cases in which that healthcare cannot be delegated — those are two such cases — that provision has to be there, or the child cannot go to school. That needs to be an urgent priority. We cannot have a situation in which I get a call once a week from someone saying, "Alana can't go to school. What am I going to do?", and I then take the nurses to court. That is a waste of everybody's time and energy that should go into organising the system properly and prioritising our most vulnerable children. That child has already had her human rights breached in missing all of P1, all of P2 and part of P3. Now, they do not want her to go to school on a Friday, and her parents cannot do the thing that they planned to do on Friday. That is unethical, immoral and unlawful, and we will challenge it.

Mrs Guy: It is great to get that kind of clarity from you. We have gone round the houses on that, and report after report continually kicks the can down the road, but you have highlighted why that has to be a priority. We will keep asking questions about it until it is sorted.

A theme of the inquiry so far — we have all mentioned this — has been lack of support for local impact teams and the need for early intervention. We know that there are gaps in early years in the baseline of those LITs. We also know that kids in non-statutory settings for early years do not have the same access to LITs. Do you feel that that ought to be prioritised? What is the impact of leaving a whole cohort of kids without access to the support that others can access?

Ms Hogan: I am reminded of what Gillian Cuthbert said about trying to rebuild the plane while she is flying it: I totally get that. If you put a lot of resource into LITs, does the early years end miss out? You need to get in early to stop them coming to the LITs, so it is a vicious cycle. It is crucial that children are caught before they ever come near the school. If they have issues, Health needs to flag those up. Children need early provision. It should not matter what setting the child is in; if they have needs, those should be identified and met. That will save a lot of time, energy and money in the long run. I do not think that anyone would disagree with that: early years should be a priority.

I recently had the benefit of Solihull Approach training — it is now called "Togetherness training" or something like that — which, if you ever get the chance to do it, will show you how important it is to help parents when they are thinking about having a child, when their child is in the womb and when their child is born. It is about making sure that the provision is there from the minute that the child is born and about what happens if the child needs help for some reason. The help needs to be there but it is not, and, if we do not correct that, we cannot be asking questions about why children need statements and one-to-one classroom assistants: it is because they do not get the help when they are wee babies.

Mr Mackle: We provided training earlier in the year for allied health professionals who, worryingly, said that they were being advised not to refer children who were obviously going to require statements. That also goes to Danny's point about reduced timetables. If children with complex needs arrive in P1 without having been assessed and without additional provisions, schools obviously cannot manage their needs. Allied health professionals are being advised not to put those children forward for statutory assessment until the term before they start school, so the provision is never going to be in place for those children in time for the start of the school year. Children can get a statutory assessment from the age of two. Our position will always be this: get them assessed as early as possible and find out what their educational needs are going to be, so that, when they start formal education, things are in place. If they are not, the situation just builds up, with more complexity and increased need for provision down the line. We are worried about them being advised in that way.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): A final comment.

Mrs Guy: I will just close the loop on the resourcing issue. I think that you contributed to the SEN Reform NI briefing that highlighted the difficulty of having lots of pilots in the system. Since the Syrian crisis, I have always looked at the issue in terms of wartime and peacetime. It is wartime, so, for services, it is about boots on the ground to deliver the things that kids need. Pilot schemes are for another time when there is maybe a bit more scope to provide them. Is that a fair assessment, or is it more complicated than that?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): A very brief response, Rachel.

Ms Hogan: You are right. We need structural change, not little projects going everywhere. The pilots provide evidence. Some pilots are great but, when they stop, you do not see them again. Ultimately, though, it is structural change that is required.

Mr Burrows: Thanks for all the work that you do and for the very good briefing. A total of 96,000 pupils have chronic or severe attendance issues, which is a figure three times the size of the population of Ballymena. Councils in England can issue a fine of £80 to parents, almost as a fixed penalty, where there are attendance issues. Do you think that that is positive or negative?

Ms Hogan: I would not support doing that in our situation. There are two categories, I suppose, following on from what you are saying. Parents who are maybe not doing what they should be doing should be taken to task and helped and supported to get their child to school.

Mr Burrows: The parents whom I am asking about, clearly, are not the ones who are doing their best.

Ms Hogan: The majority of the problems that we deal with are not like that. The majority of problems that we can speak to are to do with parents who try with every bit of their might to get their children into school but cannot do it. The people who might fall into the category that you are interested in are from disadvantaged, impoverished communities who maybe had adverse experiences themselves and need support. If people ring me up and say, "Education welfare is coming to my door. What am I going to do?", I say, "Open the door and pull them into the house, because you need help". It is about giving people the confidence to say, "Actually, I do need help. I need support. Things aren't going well".

There are multiple reasons why that can happen. We need to take an empathetic approach to families. Punishment has worked. I am not saying that we should not hold people to account, though: we have to have accountability in the system.

Mr Burrows: How do you do that?

Ms Hogan: At the minute, we use the education welfare service to do that. When a child hits a certain threshold, the education welfare service goes out. What I, and we, as a centre, have argued for is that that threshold should kick in sooner. You should not wait until a child has an 85% attendance rate. If it starts dropping to a low level, to even 90% or 87%, say, ask why it is dropping. Go and find out now. Do not wait until they have been out of school and the pattern is established. Once you start to see it, you need to nip it in the bud.

Mr Burrows: A small number of parents just will not engage. We know that children who are not at school are at higher risk of neglect, abuse and all kinds of things. Is there any stick for that?

Ms Hogan: That is where the court process comes in —

Ms Hammond: We have the education supervision orders.

Ms Hogan: — so they can be brought to court, and they are brought to court for that.

Mr Burrows: OK. I will move on. I have a question on one other thing that is a tricky issue. It is not a judgement of children. We have —.

Ms Hogan: Is any issue not tricky in this area?

Mr Burrows: They are all tricky. Teachers getting injured at school is a particular problem in primary school, particularly in the first couple of years. According to figures that I got, 250 teachers in primary schools were injured in 2024; this year, it is going to be north of 350.

Basically all of it — 95% — happens in primary schools. To give you an example, in January of this year, 50 teachers were injured in schools in Northern Ireland, and all 50 were injured in primary schools. Primary-school teachers who teach children with special educational needs in mainstream schools do not have Team Teach de-escalation training or access to things such as bite guards and spit guards.

Ms Hogan: We will not support bite guards or spit guards.

Mr Burrows: That was going to be my question: would you support bite guards or spit guards under any circumstances?

Ms Hogan: No

Ms Hammond: Absolutely not.

Ms Hogan: There are protective measures. There are a couple of things to address there. It is an important question, because our workforce is important, and none of us wants to go into work and be injured. The types of cases that I have —

Mr Burrows: Fifty teachers a month are injured.

Ms Hogan: Yes, they are, and we know about that, because they call us.

Mr Burrows: Tell me how to prevent that.

Ms Hammond: By putting in intervention earlier. The problem is that the help is not given when it is needed. Putting interventions in earlier would minimise a lot of the damage that is done.

Ms Hogan: I know of an example of an inappropriately placed child who was kicking and lashing out, with a pregnant teacher who may have been about to be injured. In that situation, the school has a responsibility to safeguard its teachers. It turned out that the child should have been in a special school, but they were in a mainstream school. The problem that we talked about over on our side was inappropriate placements. If you inappropriately place children with complex and challenging psychosocial needs and behaviour — autism and meltdowns — by putting them in the wrong environment without support, do not be surprised if they start lashing out. There are measures. The LITs should come in in such a case, bringing behaviour support.

You made a valid point about the lack of training in manual handling and so on. We are still waiting for guidance on restraint and seclusion, which we do not currently have. That would support schools in managing that situation.

Mr Burrows: I will press you on that. In any given situation in life, we can say, "Intervene earlier", but say you have a child in the here and now. Let us face it: some schools have glass removed in case a child puts their hand through it because they have become dysregulated. I am not talking about putting any judgement on children, but 50 teachers were injured in January of this year, and many of those injuries were preventable. There were smashed teeth, broken bones and concussions.

Ms Hogan: I have seen that with my own eyes. I have seen teachers with injuries.

Mr Burrows: In the here and now, when a child has become so dysregulated that they are a danger to themselves, another child or a teacher, you are opposed to the teacher having access to a bite guard, when that would simply be to prevent the teacher —.

Ms Hogan: They use guards. You are describing a policing type of intervention.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): It is a complex issue, Rachel, and I want to give you the chance to answer. When you provide the answer, however, we will then have to move on in the interests of time.

Ms Hogan: There are guards that teachers can wear on their arms in cases, for example, of autistic children who tend to bite. The teachers should also tie their hair back. Measures and mitigations such as that are already available.

Mr Burrows: Primary school teachers in mainstream schools already have those?

Ms Hogan: Yes, they should have them. What you have to do in that situation, however, is to pause. You cannot allow a child to behave like that in a school environment; it is not safe for the workers. You would have to pause, have an emergency meeting and decide what to do to prevent any further accidents or injuries to that teacher — it would be negligent to do otherwise. You would then have to sort out what to do for that individual. It is not as simple as giving out equipment, although there is, potentially, a place for equipment.

Mr Burrows: I have been told that they do not have bite guards.

Ms Hogan: Pardon me?

Mr Burrows: So, you think that they should have access to bite guards? Those are to protect the teacher. It does not put anything —.

Ms Hogan: There is access to guards that they can put on. It is nearly like a cricket set.

Mr Burrows: You are telling me that, in mainstream schools that teach children with special educational needs —.

Ms Hogan: It would be reasonable to put that on. It is just a piece of equipment; you can just get it.

Mr Mackle: It is up to the school to provide that.

Mr Burrows: Yes, but they have no guidance, support or training.

Ms Hogan: No, they do not. That is a fair point.

Mrs Stevenson: Training is key. The other key thing is that there is a dearth of placements for children with complex and challenging needs. We deal with a lot of children with a range of needs. They may be autistic, they may have very challenging behaviours and they may have severe learning difficulties and mental health problems. There is a range of needs. Those children cannot be managed in a mainstream environment, and, very often —

Mr Burrows: I agree.

Mrs Stevenson: — they cannot be managed in a special school. There is a very small number of placements, and we see children having to go outside their jurisdiction to access educational placements and specialist health placements. Addressing that needs to be a priority. Those children need to be given appropriate support, but that does not specifically feature in the transformation programme.

Mr Burrows: To close, so that I can keep myself right —.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I will come in there, Jon. I need members and witnesses to work with me. When I say that we are bringing a line of inquiry to a close, I need it to come to a close. We have now had three or four back-and-forths on this question. I understand that these are important and complex issues, but it is difficult to cover everything.

In the interests of fairness, Jon, I will allow you a final comment to close the question, and then we will need to move to the next member.

Mr Burrows: Without any judgement on the children, I am just talking about teachers in the here-and-now who find themselves, probably through faults in the system and resourcing, having to manage a crisis. In my view, if it is a matter of their getting the guidance, training and equipment to simply put a bite guard on their arm so that they can move a child without getting bitten, that is entirely reasonable.

Ms Hogan: You are correct. There are more complex children in our mainstream schools, and there needs to be guidance and support for the workforce. I entirely agree with that.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I should highlight the fact that I know from engagement with special school principals and the EA that a new protocol has been put in place for when an incident in a special-school environment crosses a line and there is an acknowledgement that things had not been handled well and that the school is not sure how it can continue to safely facilitate the child in school. There is now an EA protocol for arranging multi-agency meetings as a rapid response to that. However, whether that needs to be extended to mainstream schools, because —

Ms Hogan: That is a fair point.

Mrs Stevenson: Guidance on preventing violence at work is being developed as well.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): It is welcome that the EA has acknowledged that there are scenarios in which schools really want to ensure that the child can remain in school, but that is butting up against the safety at work considerations, as you say. The feedback from special school principals has been fairly positive, but, as you say, the complexity of need is widespread now. OK, Cara, you are the last indication there, and then that is us.

Ms Hunter: Thank you, Chair. You and the panel will be happy to know that I have just the one question. Folks, thank you so much. Every time you come here, we see your passion and we always learn something new, so thank you for everything that you do. You have definitely helped many constituents over my years as an MLA. I have one question about the processes of getting a child an assessment. I have noticed that, a lot of the time, parents with autism or ADHD are having to navigate what can be a really tiring process of getting a statement. They really struggle with knowing their rights and how to move forward with the right to appeal and the right to a tribunal. I see it time and again. Is there more that we can do regarding public messaging on the different pathways for an assessment? I have spoken to parents this week who have said, "I have to speak with social workers; I have to speak with educational psychologists", and they really find it overwhelming. Is there more that we, as a Committee, can do to help simplify what can often be a complex process?

Ms Hogan: You can refer them to the Children's Law Centre, and we will talk them through it. [Laughter.]

We actually have a parent-carer information leaflet that we drafted for that reason. It is on our website, and we are happy to share it with the Committee. We use it to explain the different stages and what parents need to do and to say that their worries and concerns are valid, that they should listen to their intuition — that sort of thing — and that they should not be afraid to pick up the phone. I say it to anyone who is listening: do not be afraid to pick up the phone and ask. It is those vulnerable people who do not pick up the phone who are maybe afraid of authority or a law centre who need the information to be available. The EA website is probably a good place: there is quite a lot of information there. We are all flummoxed at the minute with the amount of information and trying to navigate it. The rights are very straightforward, actually. It is the operational system that makes it complicated, but hopefully, that leaflet will be helpful, so we are more than happy to provide it to you.

Mr Mackle: Guiding parents through the statutory assessment process is one of the most common pieces of work that we do at the centre. I always mention one interesting statistic. You mentioned the appeal rights in relation to statutory assessments. Parents are often put off an appeal, thinking that it is a big, complicated legal process. However, in 99% appeals to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal in the past five years, 99% of parents have been successful, so, by exercising your right of appeal, you are more or less guaranteed to get provision. I always like to tell people about that statistic.

Ms Hunter: That is brilliant. Thank you. Do you get that a lot? Do a lot of people come to you, asking, "Where do I begin?"

Mr Mackle: Absolutely. All the time. Every day.

Ms Hogan: For 82 years. [Laughter.]

We are very weary-looking.

Ms Hunter: Certainly, that is a large amount of experience. That helps answer my question. Perhaps somebody can forward that to me. I am dealing with a number of parents this week specifically, for some reason, who feel like they are climbing up a hill. That is brilliant. Thank you, all, very much for being here today.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): You all look very fresh for your 82 years of working in the sector. [Laughter.]

Mr Baker: It is just a wee point on the back of what Cara said. You said that 99% —.

Mr Mackle: Yes, 99%, Danny. Imagine if that was criminal law.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): The EA officials are holding their heads in their hands at the minute.

Mr Mackle: Imagine if 99% of criminal decisions were found to be wrong on appeal: there would be a public outcry. However, when it comes to children with SEN, 99% of the EA decisions that are appealed turn out to have been wrong.

Mr Baker: Why are we getting to that stage?

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We do not have time to get into that issue now.

Mr Mackle: That is another full day's hearing, Danny.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): I will rule that one out at this stage.

Apologies if anyone felt that the evidence was rushed. There is just so much in this, and we always find with SEN that, even when you try to narrow it to a theme, it is almost impossible to do so. We really appreciate your evidence, and it will absolutely be fed into our inquiry report and recommendations. Thank you.