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AsIAm Explainer to the Department of Education on the Special Education Teacher Guidelines
On 10th December 2024, the Department of Education published revised Guidelines to the provision of Special Education Teachers in mainstream classes in primary and secondary schools, under Circular 0064/2024. The Guidelines were developed as a collaboration between the Department, the National Council for Special Education (NCSE), the National Education Psychology Service (NEPS), and the Inspectorate, and sought to bring together good practices by primary and secondary schools to make their classrooms more accessible and inclusive.
The Guidelines are broken into five sections below:
Section 1: Principles Underpinning the Special Education Teaching Model
Section 1 sets out the principles which explain why the Department runs the Special Education Teacher model, including:
- An Inclusive Education System: Schools should support every student to achieve their full potential and that all students can access an education, that schools respect each students’ identities and needs, and identifies and seeks to remove barriers to participation and achievement for all students, including students with additional needs.
- Inclusive School Culture: Schools have a responsibility to have inclusive policies and practices, and that an inclusive school supports all students to belong, connected and achieve success, and that students with additional needs feel a part of the school community, and have opportunities to participate and learn in mainstream schools and classes as much as possible.
- Collaboration: That everyone in schools, including teachers, parents/guardians and students, are working together to support a child’s learning and development goals, including identifying their learning strengths and needs, any supports they need, and how they affect their learning outcomes.
- Wellbeing: This means that schools should adopt an inclusive school culture where every child is valued and can take part and express their views, that schools prioritise young peoples’ wellbeing, that school environments, curriculums, policies and relationships promote a culture of belonging.
- Engagement and Participation: This means that school policies and practices reflect the views of young people, that they can make decisions about their education, play a key part in identifying their strengths and learning needs and supports, and that young people with special educational needs belong, and can fully take part in school life.
- Young person centred and needs based: Young people require different levels of support according to their needs, that people with the greatest level of need get the most support, that schools have the right supports to identify and provide supports for people’s learning needs. The Department uses a Continuum of Support model to make sure that any supports offered by schools address the child’s needs when they need it.
- Evidence-Informed Practice and Outcomes: This seeks to ensure that supports provided by schools are evidence-based, that schools identify a person’s strengths and support needs, that supports used develop a person’s skills are informed by a person’s strengths, interests, age and stage of development, and that teachers continue to get training and professional development to identify, put in place and oversee supports children need.
- Governance and Accountability: This is to make sure that schools use any resources allocated for special education to support children to meet their support needs, that schools provide an appropriate education for their students, and apply well-timed and appropriate supports, and that schools follow policies which govern how supports are delivered.
Section 2: The Organisation of Special Education Provision: Planning the Deployment of Special Education Teaching Supports
The next section covers how special education teaching supports are allocated to meet student’s needs, based on the principle that children with the greatest level of need should have access to the greatest level of support. It also says that schools use the Continuum of Support framework to identify a child’s learning and support needs, and to plan, apply and review supports to meet the child’s needs. It also says that children with additional support needs should have access to a curriculum which are appropriate to their needs, and that all students have access to a broad, balanced and appropriate curriculum more generally. It also covers the area of school timetables.
Section 3: Special Education Provision: Roles and Responsibilities
The next section covers different roles and responsibilities for those tasked with delivering educational supports for children at school, particularly for children who need more support than what would be available in mainstream classrooms currently. These include:
- Board of Management: Develops, implements and oversees policies which support the education of children with additional needs in their school, including admission and participation, their wider curriculum, and how any supports they need would be provided. They also inform the wider school community on these policies, oversee how reasonable accommodations are allocated to support students. They also make sure that any resources given for special education are used to support the education of children who need these supports.
- School Principal: The principal oversees policies and practices within the whole school and sets out to make the school more inclusive and accessible for students with additional needs. They are also responsible for the core special education team within the school, including how they deliver more supports to students. They will also compile a Student Support File for each student who needs more support at school, which provides details around what supports they need, how the school would address these support needs, and which settings would best meet these needs. They also support the core special education team to identify, plan, review, monitor and co-ordinate supports, and that these supports are delivered with as little disruption to class time as possible.
- Class Teacher: Teachers can make changes to how they teach, support and assess children who need greater supports, as part of their role to teach and support all students in their classroom. This includes making any changes to how classes and lessons are delivered to support the child to learn, meet their interests, and engage in an intuitive way. This may also include adapting lessons to support students, identifying student’s strengths and support needs, contributing to Student Support Plans, and making sure that lessons are accessible to each student.
- Special Education Teacher: The Special Education Teacher delivers supports to students in mainstream classrooms, by promoting an inclusive school culture, developing and promoting ways of including students with educational support needs in their classroom, identifying and providing supports their students need at school, supporting transitions. They also work with families and the child on learning and developmental goals identified in their Student Support Plan and addressing the child’s support needs, working with teachers and developing good practices for supporting children in their school community.
Section 4: The Process for Identifying and Responding to Needs across the Continuum of Support
This section goes through the framework the Department of Education uses for schools to put supports in place, called the Continuum of Supports. The Continuum of Supports identifies the child’s strengths and support needs at school, and that a child’s access needs fall on a continuum, which can change over time, and supports at school, which can range from supports in the classroom to 1-to-1 support, addresses their needs and is there when they need the support. These supports are also regularly reviewed by the Special Education Teacher to find out how the child responds, and if supports meet the child’s needs and learning goals.
There are three levels of support identified within the Continuum of Support include:
- Whole School/Classroom Support – All: Supporting all children at school, including adjusting teaching approaches, how subjects are taught, and how lessons are planned to meet or accommodate every child’s needs;
- Classroom Support – All: for those children with emerging needs, in the class context, who need more support from the class teacher to the learning environment, and where areas of more specific targeting and additional classroom-based support have been identified.
- School Support - Some: involves the special education teacher and classroom teacher providing additional targeted teaching and learning supports to respond to special educational needs of small groups and/or individuals.
- School Support Plus – Few: involves the special education teacher providing more individualised teaching and learning supports, such as 1:1 or small group support for children whose educational support needs “are enduring and significantly impact on their learning and participation in the school environment”.
The Guidelines go into more detail into these levels of support and how they are put into practice in the classroom.
Beyond the Guidelines, the Department also published a range of resources which explain different aspects of the special education system, including examples of School Support Files and School Support Plans, leaflets and reference Guides for Children and Families, and video guides explaining this in more detail. These helps make navigating the process of getting education supports more accessible for our community, and you can find all these supports in this link.
