Navigating the Irish Education System

Currently, most children with additional educational needs are taught in mainstream settings, yet those settings are increasingly incapable of meeting their needs, as the education system fails to uphold their rights. Children are required to attend schools where the built environment, practices and cultures have not changed since mid-1900s. No risk assessments have ever been undertaken to ensure children are not exposed to unsafe places of education, such as are required by law in all other places of work. TUSLA’s Code of Behaviour for Schools has not been updated in almost 20 years, despite significant advances in society including the prohibition on chastisement of children and against the backdrop of the anti-discrimination obligations in the Equal Status Acts. The absence of cohesive guidance from the Department or its Ministers, has resulted in schools failing to grapple with their statutory duty to make accommodations to practices and rules, such as uniforms, that are currently discriminating against children with additional educational needs.

As of April 2025, the Department of Education pledged to build an inclusive education system where all children and young people feel valued and supported and planned a new circular to streamline guidance for supporting students with additional needs. Circular 0039/2025 was released, covering special classes and schools, but no corresponding circular for mainstream schools has been published, leaving a gap in clear direction for these settings. The NCSE in January 2025 published a remarkable guidance document that supports the development of inclusive schools - the Relate Framework. Disappointingly, the framework remains largely unheard of in most Irish schools who are under no obligation to implement a mere NCSE guide. The Department of Education have chosen not to give the Framework the weight of a Departmental circular, nor to fund the necessary whole-school training programmes and environmental changes required for its proper implementation. The division of the Department into “Education” and “Special Education,” has created a chasm in educational provision for children with and without additional educational needs.

In November 2025, the Department’s Inspectorate stated that urgent action and system-level vision was needed to provide autistic pupils in primary schools with suitable education. Speaking to the lack of timely and effective state-supplied support services for disabled children, the Inspectorate highlighted also the need to support parents of autistic children with challenges faced, throughout their educational journey.

In a similar vein to its Education Plans, Policy Papers on Inclusion, EPSEN Review Recommendations, Inspectorate Reports etc, the Department has set up pilot project after pilot project after pilot project. The latest pilot is the multiply announced 2025 Therapists in Special Schools Pilot, for which only 15 of the targeted 45 therapists have been recruited. This is yet another iteration of the 2018 Language Therapy in schools “Demonstration pilot” which was re-branded as the In-School Therapy Project in 2021. Recently, the NCSE’s “Autism Friendly Schools” pilot 2025 saw a grand total of €50K allocated to provide training for 250 schools apparently on how to become “friendly to autism.”

Perhaps the most damaging of all pilots, was the ongoing School Inclusion Model (SIM), introduced in 2017, which gave schools control over allocating support, including time with an SNA, based upon profiled student needs. Schools have been responsible for making 1/3 of applications for Assessments of Needs, placing major pressure on the already chronic AON system, in an attempt to profile their students’ needs. A major flaw of the SIM Pilot, is that parents cannot appeal support allocations except via the school itself, providing no process by which to challenge school’s decisions. The Department of Education and NCSE do not handle appeals, leaving parents responsible for advocating for their children, with no recourse beyond the school’s Board of Management. This lack of an independent, statutory review mechanism gives schools unfettered autonomy to direct resources to children as school staff see fit – despite the undeniable fact that teachers are not therapists and therefore are not qualified to make such critical judgments about children’s needs.

A fundamental failure that underpins all other failures is the lack of appropriate data across all sectors relevant to children and especially relating to disability. Whereas the Department of Education cites a 2011 figure from ESRI of 25% children allegedly having additional educational needs in Ireland, in December 2025, the Scottish Government published granular data from its annual, statutory school census, which disclosed that 43% children have additional educational needs. By basing their budget allocations upon grossly out of date statistics, the Department of Education and this Government deny children with additional needs from any possible realisation of their right to an inclusive education.

The creation of the role of Minister of State for Special Education and Inclusion in 2020 and the consequent division of the Department of Education has allowed the Department to divest itself of responsibility for children with additional needs. Whilst the Department refers all matters relating to children with additional needs to the NCSE, the provisions of EPSEN that would give NCSE statutory power to compel schools to take certain actions, were not commenced. As a result, children with additional educational needs are in limbo with no means to enforce their rights.