Towards a Better Future

Towards a Better Future: A Review of the Irish School System
In 1998, the first comprehensive Education Act to regulate the system was enacted. This specifically
set out to make provision in the common good for the education of every person in the state,
including those with a disability or other special educational need. In 2000, the Task Force on Autism
was set up and reported in 2001, addressing the educational provision and support of people with
ASD, while the Task Force on Dyslexia also reported in 2001. The recommendations of these two
reports resulted in a substantial expansion of educational services, especially for students with ASD.
In 2004 the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs (EPSEN) Act was passed. This
established the National Council for Special Education (NCSE), which has an advisory, research
and coordination role for special education. However, due to budgetary constraints, the full Act has
not yet been commenced.
Thus, since the late 1990s government policy
has favoured the inclusion of children with
disabilities in mainstream schools and classes,
while retaining a continuum of provision of
special schools and classes to meet, in particular,
the needs of children with more significant
disabilities. In the 2013/14 school year, the
NCSE enabled over 45,700 students with
special educational needs to receive additional
teaching in mainstream schools (NCSE, 2015).
This represents 5.3% of the mainstream school
population, both primary and post-primary (the
mainstream population was 869,492 in that year
– www.education.ie). While this is the
proportion of children with special educational
needs in mainstream schools as a whole, research
“
In 1998, the first comprehensive
Education Act to regulate
the system was enacted.
This specifically set out to
make provision in the common
good for the education of
every person in the state,
including those with a
disability or other special
educational need.
”
has shown that a small proportion of both primary and post-primary schools have much larger
numbers with assessed disabilities/special educational needs and report that over 20% of their pupils
fall into this category (O’Gorman and Drudy, 2011). As well as those receiving support in mainstream
classes, in 2013/14 there were 737 special classes in mainstream schools with 4,997 places and an
additional 7,500 pupils enrolled in special schools. By 2015/16 there were 11,820 special needs
assistants (NCSE, 2015), compared to less than 300 in the late 1990s, and some 6,832 resource
teachers, many of whom work alongside the mainstream teacher (NCSE, 2015). This represents a
great improvement in the support of children with special educational needs, even through a period
of economic difficulty.
A further welcome initiative in the field of disability/SEN was the introduction of Reasonable
Accommodation in Certificate Examinations (RACE). RACE is targeted to candidates with
— 120 —