Educational Needs Assessments and Curriculum Design Case-study: School closure during Covid 19 and the rights of children with

criticism with the Oireachtas’s Education Committee highlighting, in particular, the failure to implement the right to an individual education plan, the right to an education assessment, the delivery of educational supports, and the failure to have an operable Appeals Board.

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The justification provided for such significant delays was the economic situation and the substantial costs that would be involved in bringing the provisions of the Act into effect. This reasoning aligns with the facts that many of the commitments of the Act are subject to available resources. This is observed through an analysis of Section 13 which sets out that the Minister for Education must obtain the consent of the Minister for Finance, to use money provided by the Oireachtas for the preparation and implementation of education plans.

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This creates “major difficulty” regarding the ability of the Act to meet the needs of all children with special educational needs.

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This is contrary to the focus of the Act, as described by the then Minister of Education Noel Dempsey, which is to put the child at the centre of reforms.

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III. Educational Needs Assessments and Curriculum Design

Background The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCAA) was established under Section 39 of the Education Act 1998.

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It is the statutory body of the Department of Education in charge of advising the Minister for Education on curriculum design for early childhood education up to post-primary school, as well as assessment procedure for subjects involved in the curriculum. The NCCA works towards the goal of creating the most ambitious and innovative learning environment possible for all learners in schools and other educational settings.

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Educational Needs Assessment

269 Nicole Glennon, ‘Deficit of responsibility in addressing special educational needs of children’ Irish Examiner (Dublin, 20 April 2021) <https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40270880.html> accessed 16 November 2021. 270 Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004, s 13. 271 Andrea Broderick, ‘The Right to Inclusive Education: Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Irish Experience’ (2014) 9 Irish Yearbook of International Law 25, 45 272 Dáil Deb 26 May 2004, vol 586, no 3. 273 S.I. No. 245/2001 - Education Act, 1998 (National Council For Curriculum and Assessment) (Appointment of Members) Regulations, 20. 274 ‘Bodies Under the Aegis of the Department of Education and Skills’ (Gov.ie) <https://www.gov.ie/en/organisation-information/341d4e-bodies-under-the-aegis-of-the-department-ofeducation-and-skills/?referrer=http://www.education.ie/en/The-Department/Agencies/National-Council-forCurriculum-and-Assessment-NCCA-.html#national-council-for-curriculum-and-assessment-ncca> accessed 10 November 2021.

The Education for Persons with Special Needs (EPSEN) Act enables the assessment of all children that may have special needs after an application is sent to the principal of the school, the HSE or the National Council for Special Education (NCSE). It also ensures those that are assessed with special needs have an Individual Education Plan (IEP) uniquely tailored to them. This written document establishes the teaching approach and resources for schools to allow the child to reach their set learning goals over a certain period of time. This requires cooperation from the school, the guardians, the student and any other parties that might be involved.

As previously outlined, the Act allows a Special Education Appeals Board to be established which would hear appeals from guardians and school principals if the Council refused an assessment arrangement or the preparation of an education plan, and had authority to instruct the council to arrange an assessment or education plan. A mediation process is also provided by the Act after the exhaustion of any appeal rights under the legislation. It was introduced as a way to defer the use of courts as a redress forum, but has failed to be put in operation to date.

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The Future of Educational Needs Assessment The National Council for Special Education have made a series of recommendations relating to the future of education for children with SEN through the implementation of the ESPEN Act in 2006.

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Their stressed that parents are concerned about waiting lists and a lack of agreed standards for assessment, noting in particular that the perceived delays are caused by the scarcity of suitably qualified professionals in the health and education sectors and furthermore that these difficulties are compounded by differences in the type of assessments required by the Health and Education services to trigger the provision of services in their respective sectors.

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The Council recommended that the assessment and resource allocation processes should be separated out so that assessment of itself is the identification of need rather than a categorisation to maximise resources, however this does not appear to have been fully realised

275 Anna O’Duffy ‘A Guide to the Law in Ireland in Relation to Disability’ (Independent Living Movement Ireland) <https://ilmi.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/ILMI-guide-to-the-law-in-relation-to-disability.pd> accessed 12 November 2021. 276 ‘Implementation Report; Plan for the Phased Implementation of the ESPEN Act 2004’ (1 October 2006) <https://ncse.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ncse_imp_report.pdf> accessed 15 November 2021. 277 ‘Implementation Report; Plan for the Phased Implementation of the ESPEN Act 2004’ (1 October 2006) <https://ncse.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ncse_imp_report.pdf> accessed 15 November 2021.

to date.278

The Council further noted issues in the development and implementation of the IEPs following educational needs assessments, suggesting that additional resources should be provided to schools to facilitate their involvement in IEP and that these resources ‘centre on additional posts to support the time and space requirements of the IEP process and in-service training for all teachers’.

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The emergent trend of their recommendations were the need for appropriate resourcing of assessment procedures and subsequently schools, and amendment of the current assessment process itself.

Curriculum Design In 2003, the newly established NCAA launched a curriculum review which included interviewing children, guardians, teachers, and principals in a case study of six schools, as well as a survey of teachers.

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While this was specifically a review of primary schools, the findings have limited applicability to early childhood, Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate curriculums. English, mathematics, and visual arts were the subjects reported in the first phase of the review published in 2005, while the second report in 2008 handled Gaeilge, science and SPHE. Similar issues relating to SEN were raised; in large classrooms that included children with SEN there was insufficient time for individuals to be assessed, suitable diagnostic tests to identify students with SEN were missing and further importance had to be placed on parent/teacher meetings to support these students.

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These made it an overall challenge for teachers to deliver curriculum and assessment that catered for children with a wide range of abilities. In other cases, teachers themselves have lacked the competence to cater for all learners. One reason for this can be attributed to inadequate training that lacked SEN components, meaning an environment of inclusion was hard to provide and knowledge of applying the curriculum to those with either behavioural or complex intellectual disabilities was missing.

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278 ‘Implementation Report; Plan for the Phased Implementation of the ESPEN Act 2004’ (1 October 2006) <https://ncse.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ncse_imp_report.pdf> accessed 15 November 2021. 279 ‘Implementation Report; Plan for the Phased Implementation of the ESPEN Act 2004’ (1 October 2006) <https://ncse.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ncse_imp_report.pdf> accessed 15 November 2021. 280 ‘Research Report No.8: Access to the Curriculum for Pupils with a Variety of Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Classes- An Exploration of the Experiences of Young Pupils in Primary School’ (National Council for Special Education Research, 2011) < https://ncse.ie/wpcontent/uploads/2014/10/AccesstotheCurriculum_1.pdf > accessed 15 November 2021. 281 ‘Research Report No.8: Access to the Curriculum for Pupils with a Variety of Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Classes- An Exploration of the Experiences of Young Pupils in Primary School’ (National Council for Special Education Research, 2011) < https://ncse.ie/wpcontent/uploads/2014/10/AccesstotheCurriculum_1.pdf > accessed 15 November 2021. 282 ‘Universal Design for Learning’ (AHEAD, 2 November 2017) <https://www.ahead.ie/udl> accessed 15 November 2021.

The Future of Curriculum Design For the benefit of SEN students and Ireland as a whole, the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) should be adopted.

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It is a set of principles, backed by research in neuroscience, with the aim of improving the educational experience for all students by incorporating more flexible methods of teaching, assessing and service providing. The nine principles can be summarised as follows:

i. Equitable Use: The same opportunity for engagement is given to all students via access to the same class materials ii. Flexibility in use: To consider varying styles of learning, teachers should stray from reliance on the traditional lecture model and include other methods of instruction such as discussion and group work. iii. Simple and Intuitive: Information related to module content, such as reading lists and assessment layout, and difficulty level in the assessments across these modules should be consistent. Also, the material being presented to the students should be reviewed and any with unnecessary complexity should be disregarded. iv. Perceptible Information: All curriculum material must be available in an accessible format for all students to minimise cost and misuse of term time. v. Tolerance for Error: The assumption that students arrive to a module with a certain set of ‘core skills’, such as research ability and oral presentation, is dismissed and instead the skills are taught. vi. Low Physical Effort: Unnecessary physical exertion, like excessive note taking in class that not all are suited to, is removed. Instead, material necessary to be taken away from the lesson will be available online for the entire class. vii. Size and Space for Approach and Use: Use of the traditional row model for desks is reduced, and technology is integrated into the teaching setting so students can avoid becoming disengaged with school due to the classroom model. viii. A Community of Learners: A relationship among learners and with their faculty is essential. Further engagement can come with the creation of study groups and discussion boards for example.

283 ‘Universal Design for Learning’ (AHEAD, 2 November 2017) <https://www.ahead.ie/udl> accessed 15 November 2021.