Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science debate -
Tuesday, 18 Oct 2022

Mental Health Supports in Schools and Tertiary Education: Discussion

Chairman

Members should please ensure that their mobile phones are switched off for the duration of the meeting as they interfere with the broadcasting equipment even if they are on silent mode. Are the minutes of the meeting of 12 October 2022 agreed to? Agreed.

On behalf of the committee I welcome Mr. Enda McGorman, principal, Mary Mother of Hope National School in Dublin 15, and Irish Primary Principals’ Network, IPPN, Mr. Paul Crone, director, National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, NAPD, Mr. Craig Petrie, executive member, Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools, ACCS, and principal of East Glendalough School ; Mr. John Curtis, general secretary, Joint Managerial Board, JMB; Ms Eileen O'Rourke, general secretary, National Association of Boards of Management in Special Education, NABMSE; Mr. Mark McDonald, director of schools in the City of Dublin Education and Training Board, CDETB, and Education and Training Boards Ireland, ETBI.

The witnesses are here today to discuss mental health supports in schools and tertiary education. The format of the meeting is that I will invite Mr. McGorman to make a brief opening statement, followed by Mr. Crone, Mr. Petrie, Mr. Curtis, Ms O'Rourke and Mr. McDonald. This will be followed by questions from members of the committee. Each member will have a six-minute slot today to ask questions and for the witnesses to respond. I remind the witnesses that there are timers under the screens showing the countdown clock. They should keep an eye on them when making their opening statement and also when responding to questions from members. As members are probably aware, the committee will publish the opening statements on its website following the meeting.

Before we begin I remind members of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

Witnesses should not criticise or make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in regard to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed by the Chair to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

I invite Mr. McGorman to make his opening statement.

Mr. Enda McGorman

I thank the committee for the invitation to address it on this important issue.

As the principal of a large school in Littlepace, Dublin 15 - a co-educational senior primary school with 428 pupils - I am acutely aware of the increasing levels of emotional ill health, including anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders and depression, among children in primary schools. It is clear that these problems have escalated considerably since the pandemic.

My staff and myself, the vast majority of whom are parents, do our utmost to care for and help these children but we are not experts; we are not psychologists and we are not mental health professionals, and that is the type of help many of our pupils need. The services providing mental health support to children, while excellent when we can access them, are completely inadequate and understaffed. Children are suffering and getting worse the longer they must wait for expert help. This must change. The way I see it, a number of key areas must be addressed as a matter of urgency. The first is the provision of supports to help children to access learning. The second is the reduction in long waiting lists and waiting times to access external support services. The third is to increase capacity for early intervention. Above all, there needs to be joined-up thinking.

I am a member of the Irish Primary Principals' Network and I am representing it today. I echo the calls in the IPPN submission for a seamless, integrated approach across health and education and for teams of health and education professionals to work with school clusters and individual schools to support children directly in the schools where they learn. Sufficient capacity and timely access to supports for children are key, while training and support to develop a culture of well-being in schools are also needed.

While the pandemic has made things worse, it is not as though things were great before March 2020. We have children who are bereaved or whose family unit has fallen apart due to addiction, mental ill health or divorce and separation. There are children who are homeless, who are living in direct provision or who have fled war-torn countries. My school has supported children in all of these scenarios. Some of those children have experienced several of these adverse childhood experiences and traumas simultaneously.

However, there are times when the needs of these children lie far beyond that which schools alone can provide. This is the point where external support is needed and, too often, it is the point where children are failed. We know that for children who are experiencing mental health issues, early and appropriate intervention works. Delays in service provision have a very damaging effect on those experiencing mental health difficulties, their families, communities, schools and other State services. Children with mental health difficulties cannot afford to wait. Invariably, the longer the wait, the more entrenched the problem becomes.

Why is this happening? First, there are acute recruitment challenges across a range of services, including the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, children's disability network teams, CDNTs, and Tusla. The longer it takes to fully staff these services, the worse the outcomes for these vulnerable children will be. This is urgent and the system needs to do better.

Waiting lists are another issue. Our understanding is that waiting lists for services such as CAMHS, which were already overstretched in 2020, have increased by almost half. In fact, in our experience, a significant proportion of referrals to CAMHS do not even meet the criteria to be placed on a waiting list so many children are left with nothing.

In schools, there can be issues regarding what we call "behaviours of concern" in classrooms and school yards and these behaviours can be severe for the children in question and those around them. Schools struggle to manage cases of extreme behaviour due in part to a lack of relevant training as well as capacity issues in the support services such as the National Behaviour Support Service, NBSS. Managing the behaviour becomes the focus and the cause of the behaviour is not addressed as schools and parents do not have access to the professional supports or guidance needed for the child. Early intervention is essential. It is our assertion that the services provided under the Departments of Health and Education are completely separate, disjointed and without linkage between the services provided by either Department and with little or no communication about the children accessing the services.

The IPPN has made five recommendations, which are detailed in the submission. Let us develop a culture of well-being, ensure seamless support from health and education, form teams of health and education professionals, provide appropriate and timely training and pilot approaches to support children's mental health. The IPPN believes these recommendations would go a long way to addressing the current shortcomings and alleviate the suffering of children and we urge the committee to consider them.

Mr. Paul Crone

I thank the Chairperson and members of the committee for the invitation to present. I am the director of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals. The NAPD is the professional association for post-primary school leaders in Ireland and provides a united voice for principals and deputy principals on issues of common concern across all three post-primary education sectors. I will speak from a practical perspective to identify current practice and to outline some of the challenges facing schools as they endeavour to support students with mental health difficulties.

Outside of the family, post-primary schools play one of the most significant roles in the lives of young adults. Schools recognise this and, as such, create the structures to support all students to try to help them to reach their full potential. Schools acknowledge that their role is to meet the needs of their students academically, socially, holistically and pastorally. This means that schools are recognising the person at the centre of the learning, which is the student, and the significance of the relationship between the student and the teacher in order to achieve successful outcomes in learning. Students learn better in a positive and supportive environment and the creation of this positive learning environment is at the core of the culture in every school.

The majority of students will engage with their learning without any major or persistent issues. However, an increasing number of students are encountering difficulties, which impacts on their ability to engage positively with their learning. Schools recognise this and endeavour to respond to support their students. Most schools have a student support team in operation. This team involves all of the significant school personnel to support the student, for example, the principal and-or deputy, the career guidance counsellor, the year head, the special needs co-ordinator and other qualified and interested teachers. The student support team will meet regularly and implement school-based interventions to support the engagement of the student with his or her learning in school. There are, however, limits to what the student support team can do to support students. Schools are only available to students during their opening hours from Monday to Friday and for 166 school days in the year. In addition, it is particularly concerning if a student is not attending school, which is a common consequence for students who are impacted by mental health difficulties.

Students who are experiencing mental health difficulties and have withdrawn from attending school very often fall between the cracks. It is fair to say that the majority of schools do not have access to a home school community liaison, HSCL, teacher and this presents particular difficulties for schools connecting with the home to positively collaborate in the best interest of the student.

Schools get significant support from NEPS and it is very interesting to hear from its director in her forward to the Department of Education publication, Student Supports in Post-Primary Schools, published in 2021. In this document, she writes "many factors that influence a young person’s wellbeing are beyond the reach of schools". Schools acknowledge this and they continue to work to support their students in the best way they can. She continues by stating that "a strong support system in a school can be a vital first step in addressing difficulties, whether through providing inschool interventions and/or through involving specialist services". Therein lies a significant issue for schools - linking with and working with the professional services in the best interest of the student. Schools can only do so much and then require the support from professional services for the student. Schools do not have the expertise, facilities and qualified staff to deliver mental health supports to their students. Schools are not medical establishments, treatment centres or counselling clinics. They are in fact schools whose primary responsibility is the delivery and support of learning.

This does not, however, undermine the responsibility that schools have to support their students to engage them with their learning and schools generally do this well. The NAPD would support a call for stronger links for schools with the professional mental health support services, the medical professionals and therapeutic services in a collaborative way to help students to participate fully in their learning and to reach their full potential in their school.

Finally, I reiterate a message in my written submission. There is a need to expedite senior cycle reform to ensure it is more student-centred in its content delivery and assessment practices. This must be coupled with a reimagined procedure for the selection of students for places in higher education. The terminal assessment and the higher education selection process, in my opinion, are significant factors that contribute negatively to student mental health. I thank the committee for listening and I am very happy to answer any questions that it may have.

Mr. Craig Petrie

On behalf of the Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools, ACCS, I thank the committee for the invitation to appear before it. In the past number of years, we have become aware that mental health impacts have been significant in our adolescents. Access to guidance counselling and pastoral care or student support teams within schools remains the first port of call for many of our young people. In the absence of readily available mental health supports within the community or in clinical settings, schools act as a de facto emergency department for mental health and well-being difficulties.

The guidance allocation for schools is set out by the Department of Education. The role of our guidance counsellors has changed and evolved enormously in the past decade. With the introduction of the new junior cycle, the whole school guidance plan now covers just that - the whole school - in which the guidance allocation forms part of student support and is a pillar of well-being, both as a curricular item and as a tangible for our students’ lives. That is a lot. The ACCS would also note that our community and comprehensive schools with further education programmes do not get a career guidance teacher allocation for those programmes.

Providing schools in our sector with this allowance is essential if our learners are to benefit from the SOLAS national further education and training, FET, strategy.

Many mental health difficulties manifest in adolescence. In addition, we can now see a measurable increase in mental health difficulties. That increase is to crisis levels. In our submission, we have cited a study that lays out "a growing need to implement policies that will help children and adolescents cope with the short-term and long-term psychological effects of the pandemic". Schools see these issues every day, and every day we have to triage our time and attention based on what we know about those we already support educationally and pastorally and what we may need to do for the broken child in front of us now or for the terrified parent on the phone.

The physical activity and well-being study, PAWS, showed an increase in depressive symptoms across adolescents during school closures. This is borne out in our schools too. It is a significant challenge. We are finding that, even outside the overwhelmed guidance counselling support we can offer and that can only be spread so thin, our special education teaching, SET, allocation remains stretched beyond breaking point by the surge in academic and well-being needs brought about by multiple school closures.

We look for help outside our walls, and we acknowledge the work of organisations and agencies that listen to us and try to help. Formally, links between schools and NEPS continue to be good on an individual basis, but schools observe that the level of day-to-day support is compromised by the small number of referrals that schools can make to a psychologist in a given year. The current focus of NEPS on emotionally based school avoidance is necessary and welcome and it is working, but the service's time is finite and its resources are meagre, which means that other areas are not being addressed at the level they were before 2020.

Links between the education sector and health services through local CDNTs are inconsistent and the provision of CAHMS remains different from region to region. In both cases, staffing means that waiting lists vary but are always prohibitively long and students in senior years can age out of services before they reach the front of the queue. It should never be the advice of any principal or education professional that bringing a self-harming child to an emergency department is the quickest way to access significant services. On foot of these issues, the response of schools will continue to be individual and often based not necessarily on best practice, but on the practical availability of care for the students in our respective geographical areas. A large amount still remains reliant on the relationships that school staff have with individuals in local services rather than on developed and established pathways.

Schools are fortunate. Every year, we get an allocation of teachers based on our enrolment numbers and, in general, schools can appoint teachers to fill those posts. We know how strongly that contrasts with therapist roles in the HSE across all geographical areas, which are both under-resourced and underfilled. Unless and until mental health services are brought to a level that matches the increasing needs of our young people, schools will continue to bear the brunt of this.

When we train our new teachers, it could be that basic training in mental health would be of benefit to our students. It makes sense for this training to be given through initial teacher education or through the Droichead qualification process. Our teachers of social, personal and health education, SPHE, and relationships and sexuality education, RSE, and our student support teams are conversant in this and have experience working with adolescents who might suffer from poor mental health. It could be a good thing that all of our classroom teachers would know that this is something for them to understand and assist with, in the same way that education for students with additional needs has moved into the wheelhouse of the classroom teacher rather than just being the job of the support teacher. However, in doing this, we might normalise the idea that schools are the place for this intervention.

Student voice initiatives in schools are important and can help the development of student-centred and student-led solutions, but we are the adults in the room and it is important that we deal with issues around poor mental health. Schools cannot keep carrying this. We do not have the professional expertise. We are juggling with students' health and we are terrified of dropping a ball. We do not have the time. As long as we continue to act in place of proper services, students will continue to fall between the cracks and schools will continue to have to choose whether we support a child in mental health crisis at the cost of the child with a specific learning difficulty. Some of these choices will have a cost. In our submission, we have pointed to a need for policy, for pathways and for adequate people to be in place across services, of which education is just one. We all need a co-ordinated approach to this if we are to help our children.

Mr. John Curtis

I thank the committee for the invitation to participate in the discussion on this most important of topics. My opening statement will be a summation of a more comprehensive submission that we have made to the committee.

No one in this room needs any lecture on the reality that there exist high levels of damage to young people's mental health due to the isolating and anxiety-inducing effects of the Covid-19 lockdowns and school closures, the impact of technologies on teenagers in particular, the relentless pace of change, and the shortage of community-based services and supports. Recent reports of dramatic increases in cases of online bullying, the vast majority of which occur outside school settings, demand urgent action. The social and emotional effects of these anxieties are reflected back into our schools through the attitudes and behaviours of students. It must be accepted by policymakers that seeking to site both the problem and the solution solely at the door of our schools and colleges represents neither a realistic nor an honest solution to this challenge.

While the challenges and solutions are multifaceted, I wish in this brief statement to argue that one of the most effective and, indeed, cost-effective measures the State can provide is to bring our guidance counselling services up to a level where appropriate supports can be given exactly where and when our young people - 1 million of them - are to be found, that is, in our nation's schools. The JMB's 2023 pre-budget submission is clear about the challenges facing our schools in terms of their guidance counselling provision. The recent chief inspector's report makes repeated reference to the need for system-level supports to enhance provision for guidance and counselling in our schools, saying: "Continued enhancement of system supports will be required in the area of Guidance and Counselling to address challenges related to recruitment, curriculum and increasing levels of anxiety among students". This call for enhancement of the service predates the announcements regarding senior cycle and the arrival of students from Ukraine. As these emerging demands collide with the already inadequate allocation of hours for guidance counselling, which are not yet fully restored from before the financial crash cuts of over a decade ago, the capacity of schools to cope will be unsustainable and cases relating to young people in crisis will spill over into the already overwhelmed CAMHS.

Speaking of such services, one of the greatest challenges facing school management in making provision for students' mental health support is the discontinuity across the health and education systems in terms of access, availability, tracking and interagency communication. While each service - NEPS, CAMHS, social workers, the HSE and the Garda - is working intensively to provide relevant and timely services, they all suffer not only from capacity challenges and long waiting lists, but also a lack of coherent provision from a school's perspective. In this respect, the JMB recommends that the Government initiate a review of interagency co-operation, connectivity and communication with a view to supporting schools in their referrals of students in need of mental health supports and interventions.

At school and community service levels, the State must begin to recognise the need to invest in fit-for-purpose interventions to support young people professionally with psychological and psychiatric conditions, those facing LGBT-related mental health challenges, victims of cyberbullying, victims of racism and those engaged in drug abuse, and with tackling the damaging effects of economic disadvantage and social exclusion.

School principals need to be freed from excessive workloads so that they can properly attend to student well-being. In this respect, the most effective solution lies in the allocation of additional deputy principals, DPs, across schools of all sizes and sectors. I refer members to the JMB pre-budget submission where the case for additional DP allocation is set out.

I thank the committee for its attention to this issue and we look forward to the report and recommendations that will emerge from this important conversation.

Ms Eileen O'Rourke

The NABMSE welcomes the opportunity to speak on this issue. We represent the boards of management of special schools and mainstream schools with special classes. Our schools work with and support students with special educational needs, SEN, from four years of age to 18 years of age with mild, moderate, severe and profound disabilities, with autism, with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, SEBD, and also with complex medical needs. Meaningful access to education and the physical and emotional well-being of our students are always central considerations of our boards of management.

The NABMSE considers that school mental health services are wholly inadequate at post-primary level where students consistently need to be referred to outside agencies for support, where they remain on lengthy waiting lists, even when in crisis.

This happens because the availability and allocation of qualified counsellors to schools is utterly inadequate given the rise in levels of anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide ideation, eating disorders, body dysphoria, gender dysphoria and so on among teenagers today. These are significant issues that, if not addressed early and appropriately, will lead to lifelong difficulties for each of these individuals.

There is no access to mental health services at primary level or in the special educational context. Even in a crisis situation, for example, where students talking about suicide and self-harming, the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, is unable to provide any form of concrete support. Why do we not have suitably qualified child counsellors in primary schools and special schools as members of school staff? Many children’s difficulties could then be identified and that child could be given early support, thus cutting down on more urgent need for intervention when things have significantly deteriorated for that child. Sadly, when a critical incident occurs in a school in Ireland, NEPS is only allowed to provide support to the teachers at that school. Its intervention is designed to assist teachers in counselling and supporting the other children in a school, for example, where their friend has died. In a special school, staff include teachers, SNAs, care workers, nurses, part-time teachers and bus escorts. All these staff develop friendships with the pupils and often becoming the first confidante when concerns or difficulties arise.

In the case of a critical incident, for example, when a child who attends a special school passes away, which happens often in schools where students have complex medical needs, the other pupils and parents understandably become frightened and disorientated. Their lives are shaken by the enormity of death. For children, the concept of death - the "never again" - is difficult to comprehend. SNAs, bus escorts and all the other support staff are not provided with training by the Departments of Education or Health. The role of trainer and identification of training needs is left to the board of management, principal and teachers in an individual school.

NABMSE, calls for an immediate review of the critical incident policy in schools in Ireland. This review must examine how counsellors can be deployed to special schools in emergencies. We need counsellors with specialised training who can work with children, develop staff skills and assist parents with coping mechanisms. We need to provide direct training to all the support staff surrounding children in special schools.

School attendance is an important contributor to the well-being and general mental wellness of our students. A small percentage of pupils with special educational needs disengage from school for a variety of reasons and others miss substantial time in school due to prolonged illnesses and hospitalisation. These pupils need to know there is a future for them in further and higher education. Supports must be put in place early enough to prevent this drop-out or disengagement, which prevents these students with additional needs from ever having the opportunity to engage with further education or training.

NABMSE also suggests the need to appoint special school liaison teachers who can support families who are often under extreme pressure coping with a child with complex needs. This teacher would support the children and families in liaising with other agencies, and the positive link with the school could help maintain their child’s attendance, positive engagement and achievement in school. In NABMSE’s opinion, the concept of lifelong learning needs to be resourced as early as possible for all pupils presenting with special educational needs in our system.

Our members' board of management reports that it is difficult to co-ordinate services with the HSE and Department of Education, despite the fact there are established and historical links between them. We understand that pilot programmes are a way of examining how links can be strengthened. We are, however, concerned that many pupils in our schools across the country suffer silently without support as they have no interventions for as long as pilot studies takes place elsewhere. We call for an immediate review of all existing pilot programmes with a view to extending interventions and supports to all pupils with special educational needs. A strong, consistent, accessible multidisciplinary approach has been severely lacking to date.

As I said, a small group of children with additional and special needs disengage from school for a number of reasons. These can be health, family issues, cultural misunderstanding on the part of the school and staff and mental health issues. We suggest a special school liaison teacher in every special school, continued support for distance learning and the provision of targeted learning to students who cannot attend due to illness, vulnerability, school refusal and mental health issues. We also call for cultural awareness training for all our staff in our schools as there is a need for emphasis on knowledge, acceptance and celebration of different cultures and blending these cultures into our everyday learning.

We also need to ensure that students work with other students and look at how groups are formed. We must develop flexibilities so that students are involved in a wide range of activities and, therefore, in more peer groups. Children with emotional difficulties currently do not have proper access to psychiatric services. NABMSE believes this service, along with counselling in schools, needs to be an urgent focus for the Department.

Chairman

I thank Ms O'Rourke very much. I call Mr. McDonald.

Mr. Mark McDonald

ETBI welcomes the invitation today to speak on this important topic alongside our submission. ETBs are currently patrons of 27 community national schools alongside being patrons of schools that cater for one third of all second-level schools, which is 100,000 students in Ireland.

We work in primary, post-primary and tertiary education. Those schools are welcoming, cater for learners from diverse backgrounds, are learner-centred and attempt to be holistic in everything they do. We try to support students not just academically but on a range of issues that present, one in particular being mental health issues in the past few years.

Covid-19 has definitely added to that issue although before that, we were severely challenged. Early intervention is key in preventing children from developing more complex mental health issues later in life. When schools are adequately resourced, they can play a vital role in the promotion of positive mental health. We have to recognise that at primary level, however, there are no formal access routes to in-school counselling services and there are no formal structures in all primary schools for supporting students' mental health. We call for the establishment of student support teams in primary schools to be fully supported. This could be achieved through a consultation process with the relevant bodies at primary level.

At post-primary level, we are very lucky to have the guidance counsellors who all work hard in this area. However, we need extended training in more therapeutic counselling rather than career guidance. Many schools at both primary and post-primary level have significant difficulties accessing supports for students with serious mental health issues. We heard from other contributors today on the increase in waiting lists to services such as child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. Ultimately, however, many of these issues fall to the school to address. No matter what the level of resources or expertise, parents call on schools first.

Fundamentally, ETBI is of the view that a child-centred approach to mental health services is needed yet currently, various mental health services are working in isolation or in silos. We have a recent example in County Kerry where a number of agencies including NEPS, the counselling services and Jigsaw came together along with the schools. They have been brought together to provide training to the student support teams in our post-primary schools in the county. This multidisciplinary approach to training, which was led by NEPS, has led to significant improvements in the ways that student support teams in the county operate. We call for this to be looked at and extended.

We also have the challenge of school leaders not being fully sure on who to bring in to support students. It is the view of ETBI that mental health initiatives should seek approval from a national body such as the Department of Education or NEPS with clear criteria in order that schools can be confident the initiatives and the people they are bringing in are backed and authorised.

ETBs have a proud history of running professional learning networks, PLN. Teachers and school leaders come together to learn from the best and bring that back to the schools to extend out that learning. We ask and request that these PLNs be extended into the area of mental health. Teachers would need to be released to attend the PLNs and paid substitution would be needed for that. We also see NEPS having a role in providing these PLNs as the resident expert in this area.

We echo the call from previous speakers regarding initial teacher education, and mental health should be part of that.

However we also believe that all teachers need to be adequately trained on an ongoing basis to enable them to identify students and families who are struggling in terms of mental health and to provide the most appropriate ways to support them.

What ETBI is calling for is the establishment of student support teams at primary level and the backing of them at post-primary level, which would include an interdisciplinary approach to training those student support teams. We ask for the establishment of those professional learning networks to ensure that mental health is at the forefront and that this would be supported by NEPS. We ask that we develop an accredited mental health initiative which is overseen by either the Department or NEPS. We ask for increased investment in NEPS to allow for further training of school staff and the expansion into counselling services. We also ask for further exploration into establishing the school-based mental health support teams, which this committee has already started to look at.

As a former principal who has only been out of the position 14 months, I know the role that schools can play, which we have heard about today. The key thing for me is that schools are nearly always the first stop for parents when they have an issue with mental health. They go to schools, which do their best to support that. However, we need further training and resources in that area.

Senator Rónán Mullen

Cuirim fáilte roimh na finnéithe uilig. I thank the witnesses for their important presentations on this issue of great concern. It is fair to say that the call for resources would be a significant common denominator in all their presentations. I am sure they would have support from everybody in this room on that. I will throw a few hot potatoes of varying levels of heat at the witnesses. There are some issues I am thinking about and some questions I have. While I support all the calls for resources, I worry that if we only talk about resources there is a danger we will never have enough resources because we will be subject to the ups and downs in the economy and so on. That is all the more reason that we are able to ask ourselves if there are ways in which the system is failing and if things could be changed that might enhance those resources or prevent the need for them. For example, I mention the graduate exodus. Is it a part of the problem that we are not able to get the people we need? Do we need to think brave thoughts about reserving places for people who commit to staying in the country after they qualify, for example, in the context of the repayment of fees in the future? Perhaps there could be some way that a debt could be incurred if they do not stay because it seems to me that the brain drain is part of the story.

I will turn to issues relating to how the system works. There is an understandable tendency to think in terms of having resources in schools, but that is probably predicated on schools being larger in size. I question whether that could be a problem. I mention the concept of Dunbar's number, namely,that people can only relate to 150 other people. That is an idea that is out there. Should we be concerned about schools being too big? Could that be a negative contributor to student mental health?

In recent days, I was struck by all the talk of the great role that the chaplaincy and spiritual support played in Donegal in the context of the terrible tragedy there. I am sure the witnesses will have seen various articles on that by various commentators. In addition to talking about the important role of guidance counsellors should we be saying more about chaplains? I often think of Victor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning and Nietzsche’s quote: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." The Education Act 1998 talks about physical, moral, spiritual and social education. The SPHE consultation document is much more stripped down and talks about physical and emotional education. I wonder if we are missing something in the system and if we are, I wonder if we are brave enough to talk about that. My impression is that what is proposed in SPHE is fairly stripped down and does not talk about much to do with friendship, nor does it mention bereavement at all. I was interested in what Ms O'Rourke had to say on that subject. Do we need to start asking questions about the things we discuss and the things we do not discuss?

I was glad to hear what Mr. Crone had to say about the points system. The tail of the high points courses is wagging the dog of the whole system. We have discussed this in this committee before but I refer to preventing student anxiety and mental health problems at whatever level of the scale they are experienced and we have to say that the CAO and the colleges have a responsibility here. Those are my various potatoes and I would be glad to hear what the witnesses have to say on any or all of them.

Mr. John Curtis

The Senator made some interesting points. The issue of the graduate exodus troubles us because on one level we are looking for extra provision in the arena of guidance counselling but we know we have a teacher shortage as well so where will we get these guidance counsellors? It can be planned. We know the surge in pupil numbers in post-primary education will peak in 2023, so we would imagine that perhaps we should be planning now for the fact that we will have extra teachers on board at that stage. The graduate exodus is perplexing because we do not know where all the teachers are going. If you look at the figures we have from the Teaching Council for registered practitioners, there are many more teachers on the books than we have in play. This year it has not been as acute as it might have been last year, but we need to do a little bit of thinking on where we might get the extra guidance counsellors from. We would say that some of the training courses we have need to be augmented and we would say the financial assistance for teachers who might want to engage in guidance counselling courses should be put in place. We would have some solutions that we would be able to suggest in that arena but it is an issue for us. Even in preparing the submission, the duality we came across was that in talking to the Department, we acknowledged that there is a teacher shortage. If we bring down the pupil-teacher ratio at this stage in post-primary schools it will cause us difficulties. We should be planning forward two or three years. If the Senator looks at our pre-budget submission he will see what our thinking in that arena is.

Schools do not necessarily need to be bigger in the context of giving schools the provision to help students in this sphere. We made the point on extra help for schools around deputy principal provision. If the school leader can be freed up as much as possible from some of the administrative duties that the principal will have, the care will trickle down and the principal will be able to spend more time looking after the students in his or her care. Some kind of change and help for principals around deputy principal provision is hugely important. When you talk about chaplaincy you are making a point and we have made that point to the Department in a number of engagements. Schools in our sector do not have chaplains and it would be a fantastic addition to the school system if we could enhance that provision and give it to schools that do not have it. There would be great value in that.

The SPHE programme will be augmented as we move through it. The training that will be given to teachers in the SPHE space will allow them to deal with issues such as relationships in a fundamental way. I am very hopeful that the new SPHE guidelines will help us in this regard. On the senior cycle, we all hope that the demands on our students might change over the years. A great deal of work is needed in that space in the coming years but we are all of the view that we need to bring in senior cycle reform to help the mental well-being of our students.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

I thank the witnesses for their presentations, which all basically say the same thing. I am struck by Mr. Petrie's presentation because he summed matters up when he stated:

Schools cannot keep carrying this. We do not have the professional expertise. We are juggling with students' health and we are terrified of dropping a ball. We do not have the time. As long as we continue to act in place of proper services, students will continue to fall between the cracks and schools will continue to have to choose whether we support a child in mental health crisis at the cost of the child with a specific learning difficulty.

We are pitting children against one other for resources, which is shameful and has to be stopped. The idea of us having these hearings and compiling this report is that these issues need to fixed once and for all. We have been talking for years about what needs to be done.

My first question relates to the lack of joined-up thinking. There are NEPS, CAMHS, social workers, the HSE, the Garda and student support teams, all of which work in silos, not in a co-ordinated way, which is what needs to happen. Who is going to make all these services work together and work with the student support teams? Why is it not happening?

Mr. Craig Petrie

They are disparate groups and that is the problem. One thing that unifies them is the child or family in crisis. These issues are happening within the education sphere but they are health difficulties. It needs to be between the Departments of Health and Education that we have some oversight of this or someone to tie the issues together. We need a pathway. Of course, we need more therapists and psychologists, but we need to tie our groups together better, and that falls within education because health is too distant from us as schools to make that happen.

We schools are the first port of call. Our chaplains and guidance counsellors are the people to whom these children come. They graduate to our student support teams and then we look to make a referral, and that is the point where things are breaking down, from where I am sitting as a principal. We need a dedicated pathway. Within the children’s disability network teams, CDNTs, there are people in charge of looking after assessments of need, AON-----

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

Why is there not a dedicated pathway? This is the problem. Is any interface working between the Departments of Health and Education? Is there any point at which they meet where it is working for anybody?

Mr. Paul Crone

I might come in there. When a student engages with the professional services, the CAMHS supports will engage with the school at that stage and collect information. They will send us forms and, potentially, come out and look for information. Where it breaks down from the school's perspective is that the information does not come back as to what the recommendations are to support it. When a diagnosis is being looked for, schools readily have that information and provide it, but there is no mechanism in place for that to come back. No therapeutic supports are available to support schools and that is a call all of us have been making for many years, particularly in regard to the new interventions, the junior cycle, well-being and so on.

The question is whether the therapeutic supports should be hosted in schools and that is a debate that needs to be had. Principals do not have medical expertise, so there is a supervision issue if it is a medical service. That is a debate we want to take place but we are not even there yet. The information is not coming back down to schools. Once there is a diagnosis letter, the supports are not there to help the student engage with the learning. I use the word “engage” specifically because it is the purpose of schools to engage with the learning, not to deliver those therapeutic services-----

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

Why is the information not coming back down? We need to look at the causes and the blockages to be able to free them up. Who is blocking it? It has to be being blocked by somebody such that there is not a flow whereby the child is the centre of everything.

Mr. Paul Crone

At times, there is certain information, with the permission of the parents, but there is other information that medical professionals do not release to schools.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

Is there a good reason they do not release it to the schools in order for the teams to be-----

Mr. Paul Crone

We are not looking for the sensitive information. What we are looking for is practical-----

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

Enabling information.

Mr. Paul Crone

Exactly. Equally, there is a lack of understanding, and this is where the entire system needs to collaborate. Unless someone has worked in a school, it is very difficult to understand and make a practical and realistic recommendation that a school can operate. It is those interactive, collaborative meetings that do not take place and are very difficult to take place because the creation of time within the system is difficult.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

I think Mr. McGorman wanted to say something on that.

Mr. Enda McGorman

There was a time schools were directly involved and they could make direct referrals to services such as CAMHS. That has changed, and those referrals now have to be made through the GP rather than the school. The nature of how referrals are made has moved such that they are parent and family centred rather than school centred. This means it is the parents' responsibility to make the referral, but that assumes parents are agentic and in control and can manoeuvre the web of waiting lists that is out there. Parents will then ask us whether we can intervene on their behalf, so we need to get written consent from parents for every service under the GDPR and all the other barriers that are put in our way. There was a time when I could ask for a case conference in respect of a child, where the child was at the centre of the table, and I would speak figuratively before the meeting about the child being at the centre of the table, where I could draw in those services. That has been diluted to the point where it just does not exist anymore, and that is down to staffing levels and to the cuts that were introduced ten years ago not having been reinstated. The service has been absolutely skeletised. We have talked about balkanisation, the need for integration and joined-up thinking and silos. We have an amazing vocabulary but we have not made the connections we need to make. I work in a children’s and young people’s services committee, CYPSC, the young people services committees that try to bring together the health and education services, such as Tusla, CAMHS and primary care. The Department of Education will not even turn up to discuss these issues. It tells us it is a matter for the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, or NEPS. We cannot get it to engage. I am working on a pilot project in my area, in Dublin 15, to see whether we can get back to doing what we used to do, namely, family-based services. The one thing we know about almost every child in the country is that they attend school, so let us pull services in around those children in order that we can make a difference. It comes down to the recruitment and retention issues that the Deputy and other members raised. Schools can be part of the solution but it is about pulling the services in around the child and putting the child at the centre.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

Would it take a direction from the Minister for Education to get that Department to turn up?

Mr. Enda McGorman

Yes, I think so, and those conversations are ongoing. As an end user, it is infuriating. Twenty-five years ago, I was a home-school teacher in Ballymun and we were talking about the exact same issue then, unfortunately.

Senator Pauline O'Reilly

I thank our guests for their opening statements. It was great that we had the opportunity to read them before they arrived. Deputy Conway-Walsh is correct in that a lot of the statements reflected the same kinds of issues and problems, although, obviously, they have had differing experiences. It struck me that they are calling for teacher training in the area of mental health services, which demonstrates that this is not just about looking for more resources. It is about a whole-of-education-system approach, so it is reasonable to say we need more resources as well as believing that all teachers should have training.

Mr. Petrie stated that the school is the first port of call. It is a little bit like a GP; he or she does not necessarily have the expertise to take the matter further but he or she is the first person people come to when they are struggling, and the GP needs to know where the next port of call is. We hear a lot about the lack of joined-up thinking, and we can look back and say what is not working, but the opportunity that our guests and us in the committee have is that the report will make recommendations, so we should focus on what the positive ones are. What would each of our guests choose as their top two recommendations in order that we can get this right?

I do not agree with much of what Senator Mullen said but we do agree on some things. Not only must we look at mental health services but we must also focus on the difficulties faced in modern life by young people and how we address that in schools, particularly around tolerance. In some schools I have come across, there is a difficulty with hearing all voices and respecting everyone's opinion. When that opinion is damaging to another person and the expression of that opinion undermines another person's rights, teachers can feel trapped between two constitutional rights, in some ways. What can we do before the mental health services get involved? Are there other things we can do to support teachers in addressing those conflicts, for want of a better word, between students that lead to mental health problems? I am referring to bullying and so on.

Mr. John Curtis

A lot of good work has been undertaken in schools in recent years to try to help students who might be having difficulties. The well-being guidelines produced in conjunction with junior cycle reform are very important. A review of anti-bullying policies in schools is under way and is also feeding into that. The document, Looking at Our School, which is a blueprint for best practice in schools, was reviewed this year. Its initial iteration was in 2016. Well-being is mentioned 28 times in the document. We have moved from talking about student voice to student participation. A lot of good work is taking place in the school communities to try to address some of these issues. I would like to think that schools are increasingly becoming kinder places because of these kinds of interventions. We need to that ongoing work at school level to be matched with resources. While I do not want to come back to resources all the time, it is very important to free up school leaders as much as possible to give them time to reflect. Augmenting guidance counselling would also be hugely important.

The Senator asked for priorities, and I take her point. We could do more in initial teacher education. That is a tick box and a recommendation from this committee would be very important. The review of services between CAMHS and An Garda Síochána is not dealing with a simple area. We know from dealing with social workers and staff in CAMHS that they are, like us, overstretched. There is no magic solution for this. We just have to work through it systemically. We have found that GDPR and confidentiality have closed down certain avenues for us where we used to have informal engagements. We could reflect on how we can improve on that area. With some concrete suggestions from the committee, allied to the good work taking place in schools which will continue through measures such as the SPHE guidelines, we will make our schools healthier places for our children.

Ms Eileen O'Rourke

I will refer to some of the issues raised by Senators Mullen and Pauline O'Reilly. I take the point that a chaplain can be enormously supportive resource in a school. However, many of our schools do not serve Catholic populations. We have a wide range of Educate Together schools, community and national schools and non-designated schools in the ETB system. I do not mind what an extra support person is called in the school but if we are to be truly inclusive, we need counsellors who are trained to support a wide range of students. We should perhaps widen our thinking a little. Do we need to take a teacher out of a school in order that he or she can return as a guidance counsellor or counsellor? Can we train counsellors who are not necessarily teachers to go directly into schools? I know staffing is a huge issue at the moment.

Another point that was raised, one to which I referred in my opening statement, was cultural awareness training. If our schools are to be meaningfully inclusive in the way they operate, we need to address a lot of issues. Professor Dympna Devine published a study not long ago which showed that over 95% of our teachers are white and Eurocentric in their views. We have black children and children who are gay or may have a disability who can go through the entire system and never see themselves positively reflected anywhere. I am doing a small study at the moment. Students, while they acknowledge black history month and cultural awareness week, say that when they return to the classroom where the important stuff happens the curriculum is white, fully-abled and straight. There are very practical things we can do around that to help people feel less othered, more included and positively reflected in our system. Obviously, that will help with students' level of engagement and their self-worth and self-esteem.

Mr. Mark McDonald

To respond to Senator Pauline O'Reilly's point on resources - I think Senator Mullen made the same point - it is important to say this needs to be properly resourced if we are to meet the challenge. Within that, we can start with some good and easy points or the low-hanging fruit. We have given some examples from the ETBI submission, which has been echoed elsewhere, about initial teacher education. That needs to be looked at but there is also the ongoing training of staff. That is very resource light but its impact can be huge. We spoke about the PLNs where one person is trained in bringing that network back to the staff. It is not about everyone suddenly being experts but about people being able to pinpoint, address and see where issues are coming from and to support them in that.

We gave the example of what happened in Kerry using an interdisciplinary approach. I will give the example of the regional education and language teams, REALTs, and the response to the Ukrainian crisis. I chair the Dublin committee. Very quickly, we brought together the ETBs representing the schools, the NCSE and NEPS and Tusla was represented through the education welfare services. They have come together and worked extremely quickly using an interdisciplinary approach. It is possible. While we are looking for long-term resources, we also have to look at ways we can do this quickly without adding a huge amount of resources with it.

Senator Pauline O'Reilly

I should say that Senator Mullen and I are not on the same page on chaplaincy, in case anyone thought we were. We are on resources, however. We will leave it there.

Deputy Jim O'Callaghan

I thank the witnesses for coming in and for their opening statements. I found them very helpful. I will start by asking Mr. McGorman a question. I am conscious that society keeps expanding the role and responsibilities it expects teachers and schools to perform. Assuming that there is not an issue in respect of resources and taking into account that teachers, in fairness, are not qualified medical practitioners, what role should schools and teachers primarily play when it comes to mental health issues with the students before them?

Mr. Enda McGorman

We very much see our role as tapered. It is in the support for all. That is why we are developing whole-school policies and practices where we look at the entire student population. We have had a huge growth in the number of programmes available. In fairness to the providers, substantial training has been provided in rolling these out through NEPS and so on. It is to our despair that notwithstanding all the initiatives we have in school, schools are kinder places and much more student-focused than might have been the case in the past. However, because of changes in society, which have been mentioned and I do not propose to list again, we find that all the anxiety, mental health issues and difficulties that have been mentioned are on the increase in spite of all those services. We look at support for all, then support for the many and then support for the few. Our role in school is to say we need external support and expertise. Unfortunately, that is the point when we put our hands out and there is nothing there. We feel like the system is broken all around us and we are the only thing left standing.

Deputy Jim O'Callaghan

Is the primary function of teachers and schools to identify children who have issues and refer them on to the services we want to have in place? I put that question to Mr. Crone.

Mr. Paul Crone

No, that is not the primary function. The primary function is in the delivery and support of learning.

Very often schools can identify issues while delivering their primary function. Schools are very good at supporting all. Student support teams are good at supporting the sum but the critical part comes with the few and that is where we struggle. Schools identify when supporting students, engaging with the curriculum and engaging with their learning. That is when issues can be identified by schools but it is not our primary function.

Deputy Jim O'Callaghan

I know but what about when it comes to the assessment and interaction with mental health issues in children?

Mr. Paul Crone

Schools are very good at describing the behaviours and actions because they see them in interactions with their peers and adults.

Deputy Jim O'Callaghan

So schools can identify.

Mr. Paul Crone

They are.

Deputy Jim O'Callaghan

Do special schools have a greater responsibility to engage and appraise children who have mental health issues?

Ms Eileen O'Rourke

Yes, because these children are already vulnerable. They have many more difficulties than children who are able to attend mainstream school and maybe not need any extra support. A child who already knows that they are very differently abled and who may have very complex feelings about that or who may not be able to communicate appropriately then they need somebody very specialised who can actually understand the messages that they are trying to send. As Mr. McGorman mentioned earlier, these can come out as behaviours of deep concern so highly assaultive and damaging behaviours. A child who behaves in that way is a child in crisis. Currently we do not have the personnel, we do not have the time and sometimes we do not have the appropriate physical space to support that child even within the school and classrooms.

Deputy Jim O'Callaghan

Obviously the quantification of the issue and how widespread mental health issues are within schools is very important. Mr. Petrie referred to the PAWS report. Has other qualitative and quantitative research been done which indicates the extent of mental health issues within schools?

Mr. Craig Petrie

Yes. The ESRI looked at a similar issue and published its report. Dr. Katriona O'Sullivan and her group compiled a report called A Qualitative Study of Child and Adolescent Mental Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Ireland. The Institute of Public Health has published a blog which is a study on the impact of Covid-19 on the mental health of people living on the island of Ireland. There is plenty of material for us to back up the numbers if we need to and I think it is more than anecdotal at this stage. That is important and that is why we quoted those reports because this issue is more than saying, "We think it might be more severe than we had feared." This really is what we have talked about for the past two or three years and it has landed with our staff now.

Deputy Jim O'Callaghan

Mr. Curtin mentioned the impact of Covid-19 lockdowns and school closures in his opening statement. Have they had a significant impact on the mental health of students?

Mr. John Curtis

It has. What we have found having talked to people who work in schools is that first-year students seem to be socially a little bit behind where they might have been so one will have an exacerbation of problems as we move through the system. I hope that the situation will settle. Personnel at school level are marvellous in trying to make up for these deficiencies in the manner in which they engage with the pupils. Most schools now have care teams comprised of caring individuals from within the school community so a lot is being done. Certainly this has highlighted the importance of schools in the first instance.

Deputy Jim O'Callaghan

Yes, of course.

Mr. John Curtis

It is great to have students back in schools because in many instances we are in loco parentis and pick up the pieces. There have been difficulties. The Covid situation has put a spotlight on mental difficulties and issues that we will have to try to deal with.

Deputy Jim O'Callaghan

Finally, I am conscious that Mr. McDonald mentioned that professional learning networks for mental health would be an avenue that society should pursue. How would they operate?

Mr. Mark McDonald

They can operate very locally or regionally. In my ETB, for example, we are doing psychological first aid. First, we are training a group of teachers in youth reach and that will go out then to primary and post-primary schools. It means a small network of people but maybe one from every school gets good training in psychological first aid. As Mr. Crone has said, it is not about replacing expertise but to give some ideas to staff such as how to identify, how to see it and what can be done from there. Training can be done very simply at a schools level, regional level or county level.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

I want to acknowledge all of the good work that is being done in schools and I have seen it for myself as I have a lot of interaction with schools. I am concerned, like everybody else, that when things go wrong where are the supports for schools and they are basically held out to dry for things that may be way beyond their control in terms of addressing them.

Are the reports on the impact of Covid cross-sectional? Have comparisons been made between what happened in this State and other countries?

Mr. Craig Petrie

The Institute of Public Health covers the island of Ireland so it works on data from both the North and the South. The other reports are specific to Ireland. I am sure that it would not take long to find studies that have been done in the UK as they are far more plentiful than studies done on Ireland. They give similar statistics and similar results.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

On the importance and impact of a home-school liaison officer, has the difference made been measured in improving mental health?

Mr. Craig Petrie

I am not aware of any.

Mr. Paul Crone

I do not think that there have been empirical studies. We would hear it on the ground in schools as we travel around the country and the issue would very much have been discussed in the review of delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS, that was done over the past while. The Tusla educational support service, TESS, operates the system now. I do not think that there is empirical data but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence and information around that.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

It would be good for that research to be done because the home-school liaison scheme is one the best developments in education that I have seen in the past 30 to 40 years.

Mr. Craig Petrie

The fact that the NEPS has changed its focus in the last year to look at emotionally-based school avoidance, which is what we would have called up to now school refusal. The change is probably an indication that this is an issue that needs attention and that students are not getting to school. That would be across schools rather than just those with home-school liaison officers.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

I find it difficult to understand that a written plan for a child, and there should be a plan of action, would not be shared with the home-school liaison officer or the team within the school. There is no point in drawing up a plan if key people are not involved in implementing the plan.

Mr. John Curtis

The Deputy has made an interesting point. There is firewalling of information in schools now that would not have happened previously. That is why we need this matter to be investigated as it would be useful to us all.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

That work needs to be done urgently.

We have been contacted by researchers who are undertaking a Ph.D. in education psychology. So unlike clinical and, potentially soon, counselling psychology, the educational psychologists who are predominantly hired by the public education have received no support yet are required to pay extremely high fees of more than €11,000 but they are not reimbursed for their work. By comparison, in the HSE clinical psychiatrists who study to the same doctoral level get 60% fee cover and a modest salary. Would the delegation see a similar approach to education and counselling psychologists being trained to work in the education system? Why is there a difference?

Mr. Enda McGorman

The route into educational psychology used to be like that. It was not initially at PhD level but at masters level but funding was set aside with pay to pursue the course. Unfortunately, this scheme is another victim of the cuts and it was never restored. We have forgotten to look back at things that worked well pre the guillotine at the time. The scheme did work. The routes into educational psychology are challenging. We cannot get teachers to stay in this country to teach, therefore, it stands to reason that the same applies to asking them to stay yet give up pay and pay exorbitant fees for the privilege of becoming an educational psychologist and then the challenges of staying within the system because of the demands that are placed on them. We need a root-and-branch review of all entry-level programmes for speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, psychology and right across the board.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

Yes.

Mr. Enda McGorman

The Psychological Society of Ireland, PSI, has made strong recommendations about routes into its services but the problem is across the board.

There is no point in me, at one level, asking for school-based support services if we are just creating more vacancies on educationposts.ie or the recruitment websites because it is the entry point. We also made very strong submissions on mid-career conversion courses where people may have expertise. I have a degree in psychology as well as being a school principal. There are many people with multiple qualifications who could do a conversion course. We need to be very creative with all of the entry routes, including speech and language, educational psychology, occupational therapy and right across the system, if we are to tackle this issue right now because the vacancies are right across the system. We put our hands out there for support and all we get is a place on a waiting list.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

Yes, and that is no good to any child. We will take up the issue with the Minister, Deputy Harris. He will be before the committee tomorrow afternoon and in the Dáil later tonight. If we get an opportunity to do that again-----

Mr. Enda McGorman

We have done considerable advocacy on that issue. I work on a CYPSC and the CYPSCs do work. They are integrating the services and pulling them together. Just last week, my CYPSC launched a pack to support schools around school refusal in the Fingal area. There are good nuggets and I do not want to come into the committee with a tale of despair. However, we are looking for improvement and at where we can direct our energies.

Senator Fiona O'Loughlin

I thank the Chairman and all our guests for their presentations and commitment in this area. I thank the schools, school communities and boards of management around the country. I have no doubt this is a complex and far-reaching issue on which so much needs to be done. I know all involved are doing their best to try to grapple with where we are. There is no doubt that pupils are experiencing emotional distress, trauma and bereavement, as was highlighted during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is fair to say that there is no one size to fit every situation. We need supports in place for students and teachers. There is no doubt we also need to look after the mental health of teachers.

It is important that we acknowledge that there has been a shift. The Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, sought and received funding of €5 million for a pilot scheme for a programme of counselling supports for children. That is ground-breaking in the development of school counselling. Those supports offer an opportunity for early intervention, which is of great importance. More important, this also brings recognition that mental health in schools is an educational issue.

Mr. McGorman stated that in his experience education has not come to the table. That concerns me and it is important that we try to do something about it because the particular link that was made indicated a divergence from the opinion that this is a health issue and not an educational one. I hope that will herald change. I acknowledge Seána Brady who did a of work in my party on that issue.

We should have preventative measures in place to ensure positive mental health as opposed to dealing with crises when they arrive. I have some experience of restorative justice. My understanding had been that this was a process that teachers and principals could bring in to schools when negative behaviour arose and that it could provide support in that way. It was a very good system. I was in a school recently in Newbridge where the teacher uses different forms of this throughout a school lesson and I was greatly impressed. This was to check in where students were and they could give a number. I am sure many of the witnesses are familiar with this. It was excellent and gave every pupil an opportunity to be heard with respect to where he or she was at that particular time point in time. I ask the witnesses to respond on that.

I agree that the whole-school, community-based approach is important, with stakeholders coming together. I am from Rathangan, which is a small town, and we had a very difficult situation approximately 12 years ago, which I will not go into now. We had a fantastic response from all the State services. They came together and formed a circle with the school and community. It very much worked in preventing further suicides and trying to ensure the young people felt heard, whether they needed to have positive mental health examples in their life or were in crisis themselves. I agree with the importance of home school liaison teachers and I am conscious of schools that do not have such a teacher. I completely agree with NABMSE on having a special school liaison teacher appointed to support families.

I ask the witnesses to comment, including on preventative measures and supporting positive mental health if they so wish. We need to support teachers the whole way along on this.

Mr. John Curtis

We are all on a journey in the context of establishing what works best for students in our schools. In recent years, we have become more acutely aware of the need to help students in this area. The Senator mentioned looking after school communities and teachers. As a pilot project, we brought in a mindfulness programme this year for some of our principals whereby they could engage regularly with a number of expert practitioners online to work things out themselves. We will pilot the programme in schools to see if we can get some teachers to take part in the course and perhaps they can then bring it to their pupils. We are all learning in this space.

The Senator mentioned restorative justice. That has been very useful in many of our schools. We are all in learning mode and it is important that we share best practice.

I will come back to one issue on resources, if I may. I have been appearing before this committee for many years, including when it was chaired by the Senator. I have great faith in the practitioners around this table and the officials in the Department of Education. The Senator mentioned the Minister. We find that the officials and the Minister will advocate for funding on our behalf. I know that talking about resources is not the be-all and end-all but it is still frustrating for us that even the latest OECD figures show Ireland is so far down the table in the context of overall investment in education. That has nothing to do with the people in this room. I know how invested in education everybody here, departmental officials and the Minister are. However, I refer to the proportion of the national pie available to education because I may not appear at this committee many more times. Unless politicians look at the proportion of the national pie that goes into education in the first instance, we are all going to struggle. That is my personal plea at this juncture.

Mr. Mark McDonald

The Senator made a point on preventative measures and said she has seen these when she goes into schools. These are becoming the central issue in schools in regard to well-being and mindfulness. The Senator also mentioned restorative practice. Having been a principal of a school that dealt with restorative practice, it is all about relationships and how we relate to each other. Teachers will say it is also about how they relate to their partners and children when they go home. It extends into all part of school life and life in general, and that is very beneficial.

The student voice, especially in the past couple of years, is very much being pushed in schools and is taking on great momentum.

We have curricular supports for well-being but extracurricular ones also. We mostly have well-being committees which are run by students and now many schools have a post of responsibility around well-being co-ordinators. As Mr. Curtis said, mindfulness does not just concern students but teachers and leaders also.

There is a huge amount being done and I have only given a whistle-stop tour of them. While I do not wish to finish on a negative note, support has to given around this. Without these developments, what would be the position? Thankfully, we have them and the area of well-being and supports for young people is a great passion among educators.

Deputy Marc Ó Cathasaigh

It is interesting to note that the autism committee also heard this morning about mental health supports for people with autism. I note as well that the Sub-Committee on Mental Health met this morning. Balkanisation was mentioned. It is interesting that even in the Houses of the Oireachtas this morning, three different committees met to discuss more or less the same issue.

As a former primary school teacher, I share some of the frustration I have heard from members that teachers are often the last to hear and the last to be listened to, despite the fact that they spend 25 or more hours a week in the company of these children and often, apart from their parents, are the people who know these children best. Yet there does not seem to be a way to make those teaching professionals heard in respect of provision of mental health services, and that is a huge opportunity missed.

The thing that jumped out at me from the IPPN presentation was that we should have teams of education and health professionals to work with school clusters and individual schools to support children directly in the schools where they learn. To give a concrete, real-world example of that, I know of an inner-city Waterford school where there are three different CDNTs represented within that school community. One of them is based out of Dungarvan for those in Waterford west, so some of the children there are supposed to access their services in Dungarvan. That is an hour from the school each way, plus the appointment time. That is a full day for the parents. For God's sake. The school is open to this and has talked to me about it. Why on earth would we not host the services in the school building? I know that creates the issue of competency and who is in charge of that, and there is already a heavy load on school principals without having to become health professionals as well as everything else they are supposed to do, but there are opportunities there as well.

I think Mr. Crone said that schools are really good at supporting the many and that it is the few we need the specific help with. Mr. McGorman said we see the role tapered. That really is the case. We have a huge resource in respect of our teaching profession, notwithstanding that we are losing teachers and they are going abroad or moving to other areas. One of the strengths of education in Ireland, however, is that we have continued to attract really good candidates into the profession and that our education system is built on the quality of the teachers we have rather than other things. We are making progress on the pupil-teacher ratio and issues like that, but the fact that we have good-quality people in the sector is the foundation stone of our education system.

Deputy Conway-Walsh referred to career progression and allowing and enabling people to move into something like educational psychology or provision of other services. Other than that, when someone enters a teaching career, he or she will either do 40 years in the classroom or take a principalship. Many teachers I know are not interested in a principalship because those who take them stop teaching. For a walking principle, that is the end of it. The day teachers enter a principalship, they become administrators and can forget about teaching. They will occasionally get to interact with classes, but most of the time they are giving out to bold people, which is probably not why they got into teaching in the first place. We have a huge resource there and people who need other progression pathways. It seems clear as day to me that we should be pointing them in directions where they can support, interact with and teach children in a different way in our school systems.

As for educational psychologists, it would be such a huge resource, even while people are training, if they could provide, for want of a better word, that triage service of looking at people's needs and just making sense of them. Then, by the time the children are sitting in front of the educational psychologist, they are making best use of that time and not engaging in form-filling.

I do not know if anything I have said has amounted to a question in terms of punctuation marks. I do not know if I quite got to a question mark at the end of that. It was mainly observations. Perhaps the witnesses feel that some of them merit comment.

Mr. Enda McGorman

If I may, I will kick the ball initially. As for the CDNTs, it is exactly as the Deputy said. That is a massive frustration for us. If I may give an example, we have one special school in our area, Dublin 15, that has five CDNTs working with it, so I can talk about one child with speech and language difficulties but not another child. The other child does not have a speech and language therapist in his service, and there is one principal dealing with all of five different services. We said at the start, when CDNTs were being reconfigured, that this was the wrong way to do it. We are proactively working on that. We have convinced the HSE to come on board and put in place one service for the school in question, see how it works and put all the resources into that in one case. Then, if we can show that it works successfully there, let us move it out beyond that.

As for the notion of teacher career progression, we have to grow up about this. We have to be mature about it. Deputy Ó Cathasaigh has hit the nail on the head in respect of teacher progression. Not everybody wants to be sitting in sixth, fifth, fourth or third class for 40 years. We have different routes. It is a question of having that talent and availability there and the need to match them up. There is also the idea of getting people in training - and we have said this to speech and language therapists as well as psychologists in training - out and working in schools to assist and to do some of the lifting along the way. That that would be really welcome as well.

In response to Senator O'Loughlin, I emphasise again the huge amount of work going on in schools. The Senator is absolutely right. I had in my school a tragedy when we had five deaths in one year, one by suicide. Every single time people looked to the school community for leadership. Every single time they asked, "Where is the principal in this?" and "What can we bring to the table?" Schools are more than willing to bring that expertise, compassion and, dare I say it, love with them, but when we put our hands out for the supports, that is when the support has been found lacking.

I hope that answers some of the issues Senator O'Loughlin and Deputy Ó Cathasaigh have raised.

Mr. John Curtis

If I may, the issue of fluidity is very important because what we find in our schools is that oftentimes the principals are the leaders in the school. They will identify people who might be good in a caring capacity and they may like to get those people trained up as guidance counsellors, for instance, but to do that they have to take, say, an 18-month course. There are financial implications to that. There are release implications at school level. I think we could do a little work to allow the kind of fluidity Deputy Ó Cathasaigh mentioned because it is very important for the profession.

Deputy Marc Ó Cathasaigh

In fact, the teachers will incur a cost. They will not receive an extra payment for doing the course.

Mr. John Curtis

That is the problem.

Deputy Marc Ó Cathasaigh

They will not have an additional qualification. They will never pay back the cost of their fees, never mind the release and everything else.

Mr. John Curtis

That is the problem. Again, prior to the cutbacks around 2010, there were more opportunities for people to get money back, if you like, in the system. We could look at it because the Deputy is right that there are people in the system who would be brilliant in the areas of mental health and looking after the students. At school level we would know who they are, but perhaps we could get those people to do a training course whereby they are not disadvantaged financially and the school has some kind of means of release. We have huge problems at the moment, especially in the area of guidance counselling. We just do not have enough people out there. I absolutely take the point about fluidity. It is hugely important.

Mr. Craig Petrie

To pick up on that, we had a case of maternity leave in our school a couple of years ago and because we could not get a full teacher in to do the job, we got somebody to cover the classes and then, for the pastoral role the person had, we got in a psychologist to work with us. The richness that that brought to the experience of our school support team and pastoral care was extraordinary. It would have been a brilliant jumping off point for us to be able to encourage one or two of those staff to pursue that sort of area, whether simply as a counsellor or as a psychologist, but that avenue just is not open to them. We lose because of that. Our whole school community loses because of that.

Mr. Enda McGorman

I am very conscious of the preponderance of representation at post-primary level around the table. At primary level the roles of administrative deputy principal, counsellor or chaplain do not exist. With the moratorium in school leadership teams for the past decade, the supports we have are minuscule. The only service we have available to us are special education teachers, who are run ragged at the moment dealing with all the other educational issues they have to deal with. I know resources are finite, but the idea that we could have any of those supports at primary level would be a dream to us. We do not have access to any of them, unfortunately. I know Ms O'Rourke mentioned that in her submission, but it is a matter of getting that support. I think the need for it is well demonstrated at this stage at primary level, particularly senior primary level, because the problems children experience at post-primary level are right there at senior and even mid-primary level as well.

Deputy Marc Ó Cathasaigh

It is also worth saying that those posts of responsibility are fantastic value for money for the taxpayer. A lot of expertise and experience is provided for what is not a great deal of extra money and they have a huge role in contributing to facets across the school, not just in mental health but also curricular implementation and all of those things.

Mr. Enda McGorman

The Deputy can see the unravelling that is needed-----

Chairman

I have to be fair to all the members in giving them equal time. I call Senator Flynn.

Senator Eileen Flynn

It is very nice to have people before the committee with solutions. I just came from the Joint Committee on Autism where we discussed mental health and other services for people who are autistic. It is important people come to the committee with some solutions.

I apologise that I did not get to hear everyone's input but I read the submissions. I have done some work on the ground with ethnic minority groups and marginalised communities who really struggle with their mental health and wellbeing and of course there are pressures on young women and equally on young men. The Irish National Teachers' Organisation, INTO, published a programme of four simple asks. One of those was to have psychologists in every school. I think that is possible. Obviously I am not the Minister for Education but it is possible to have those supports in our schools for young people to access. In the other committee we were talking about how having services in school can help our children.

I thank the witnesses for coming before the committee and for some of the solutions they proposed. I will not take up much of their time. It makes our job much easier when solutions are proposed.

Chairman

Was there a specific question or does someone want to respond to Senator Flynn?

Mr. Enda McGorman

I thank the Senator for her support to schools and school leaders. We are all here because we care. I entered the teaching profession to be a teacher and to teach and, as the Deputy said, I was sucked into management, but my passion is for the children in our schools. That applies across the board to everyone here. The Senator talks about access to services and that is what we are craving, that when we put our hands out, when support for the many becomes support for the few and we realise we need external support, that is the point where children are being failed. As we said earlier, they are being placed on waiting lists that are getting longer. We must ensure people are in those roles. Unfortunately the children's disability network teams, CDNTs, that are set up are understaffed. The Senator will know this from the autism committee that has also met about this. The three CDNTs in my area, Blanchardstown, Blakestown and Balbriggan are 40% staffed. That means they are 60% down on what they should have. Not only is it impossible for the teams to do the work but people are leaving those teams because they cannot cope with the demands being made of them. We need to address access to all of these professional services and some of the ideas-----

Senator Eileen Flynn

We need the access, the services and the professionals because we cannot expect our teachers to be counsellors and bereavement counsellors. We cannot expect too much of our teachers. We need to work hand in hand with and listen to the teachers as that is important. However, our young people from all walks of life are crying out for mental health supports. It is an investment. How does the Department invest in our children going forward? It was one of the asks of the INTO before budget 2023 and I will do all in my power to provide support and make it possible. I most definitely would, but we cannot expect too much from teachers.

One of witnesses is a qualified psychologist, but how can they do two jobs? It is about having the services as well.

Mr. Enda McGorman

It is also important to acknowledge the non-statutory services such as Barnardos, Jigsaw and all of those services we rely on when the statutory services are not available. They do Trojan work as does the voluntary sector. It is important to acknowledge that everyone is pitching in.

Mr. Paul Crone

On a point Deputy Ó Cathasaigh made, the quality of our teachers is what is keeping our system going as is the caring nature of the teachers and their commitment to supporting their students. In any new system or in any way they are asked to support students, schools will not be found wanting. They want to be involved and to support their students. We will certainly be at the table and our voice will be heard loud and clear.

Chairman

Mr. McGorman spoke about round-table meetings about a specific child where different agencies discuss the needs and the care of a child. Did he say they are not happening at the moment? Back in my day, when we could openly discuss a child, now with the general data protection regulation, GDPR, we have to be more careful and a principal is now cautious in coming to a public representative to talk about a specific child. It was easier six or seven years ago for a Deputy to go to the different agencies but now it cannot be done or it is difficult. We have to talk in coded language. Did Mr. McGorman say that these team meetings are no longer taking place or are the less common?

Mr. Enda McGorman

Perhaps I was harking back to when things were functioning and we had multidisciplinary teams that were staffed and resourced and everyone was able to do the work. The first problem is getting access for children. I am principal of a senior primary school so children are only with me for third, fourth, fifth and sixth class and then they move on. They could be in my school for the full four years without getting access to any therapeutic service, so the availability of people to work with the children is one issue. Communication is also an issue, as the Deputy said, and we have contact with local representatives when they hold clinics and families go in despair to them or they talk to them on the doorsteps or somewhere else. However, the problem is moving the piece on. I go back to the point I made earlier. The new assumption, especially under the HSE model, is that the parents are agents who are able to command all the services are their child and draw the services in. That is not the reality and parents experience massive difficulties in trying to negotiate their way around these services. It is similar for GPs. For me to talk to the GP of a child, I have to get the signed consent from the parent and email it to the receptionist to pass on the GP before the GP will take a phone call from me. We have to ask ourselves why. What is the risk? We are very conscious of GDPR and for the right reasons but sometimes that becomes a barrier to providing support to the child at the centre of this.

I keep coming back to the point that school is the one place that nearly every single child attends, so we have to refocus----

Chairman

I will interrupt Mr. McGorman to say that the GDPR issue comes in handy for people who provide the service. It is very difficult for parents to navigate. That is why they come to the Deputy. The Deputy or other public representative approaches the services but the services say they cannot discuss Mary Murphy because of GDPR issues. They ask whether we have the permission of the parent and when we respond that we have, they ask whether we have it in writing and even if we do have it in writing they still will not discuss the needs of the child. These people who are being paid very high salaries are using GDPR to move away from the case and to stop me or any other public representative annoying them. I am sure other public representatives have the same experience I have. What happens is that I get fed up of doing it and just tell the constituent there is nothing I can do or I have tried my best. Ten years ago I was able pick up the phone and talk to someone without any problems.

Mr. Enda McGorman

I have my consent form pre-armed. We have a massive issue around homelessness and trying to get families rehoused. I spend a lot of my time with Fingal County Council housing department. The Chairman talked about brick walls in other areas, so the first thing I do is get consent. When the parent comes into me, we write it out and that is the first thing I send because it is used too often.

When we discuss this in our collaborative groups, we work hard to try to get around that from the get-go, so that the school can be at the centre of conversations around that.

Too often it is used as a lame excuse or a barrier; I hope not as much now. We are trying to move away-----

Chairman

From my point of view, it is being used and abused.

Mr. Enda McGorman

Too often.

Chairman

That is the way it is. The child is falling between the cracks. If it was ten years ago, there would be an awful lot more accountability than there is at the moment.

Mr. Craig Petrie

This also speaks to the issue around the differences we see from region to region. We still have case conferences around individual children, but not nearly as often as we would like. They are the most effective way of getting support for a child; everyone is around the table, a plan gets thrashed out and we can implement the plan at all of the different stages with all of the different agencies. It does not happen as often as we would like and I am acutely conscious that when therapists from our local services are in with us for that hour, that means another student in our school is an hour further down the waiting list, about which we have been talking, in terms of actually being seen. We are in a catch-22 situation. We want the best for all of them, but we are robbing Peter to pay Paul a lot of the time.

Chairman

God be with the days when the person who was at the case conference would say to the local Deputy and say, "Will you push this on a little bit, I cannot open my mouth, but if you put a little bit of pressure on, it will be solved". It was solved. I solved many of them in my day.

Mr. John Curtis

In the context of the case conference, once you get to the case conference and you are dealing with the professionals around the table, it is fantastic because the people we engage with from the other agencies are brilliant, when they have the time. The problem is getting to that case conference stage; that is where the complications are and there is a lack of personnel and resources. The conferences themselves are marvellous.

Chairman

Ms O'Rourke mentioned absenteeism for various reasons as an issue. I am not sure whether it is in primary and post-primary, or generally. I saw a report in one of the weekend newspapers. I did not read the article, but I intend to do so because it might be beneficial to this committee. Is it a problem? Is it holding children with disabilities back, to Ms O'Rourke's knowledge?

Ms Eileen O'Rourke

It is kind of a complicated question to answer in some ways. Certainly, Covid-19 has had a detrimental effect on children with additional needs and teachers in our member schools have reported school refusal, severe social regression and withdrawal resulting in a refusal to come to school. I was in a hospital school last week; some of the children are there for seven to eight months. While the hospital schools do their best, what they are able to offer is maybe half an hour fitting around all of the medical needs the child has at the time. It is very difficult for children coming out of a hospital school to go 100% back into their regular school and classes without feeling lost or inadequate or that they have lost out on so much. That is very anxiety-inducing. Can I make another point?

Chairman

Go ahead.

Ms Eileen O'Rourke

It is just a quick point relating to something Senator Flynn said. She mentioned that we were coming with solutions. I will talk about special and primary schools together because, as the committee knows, special schools are seen as a subset of primary schools, which I do not always think is appropriate but I will go with it for this comment. We all know that our children are given phones at earlier and earlier. That means they are open to a toxic and destructive habit, which brings them down rabbit holes of conspiracy theories, items on the dark web, all sorts of websites encouraging eating disorders and very harmful and destructive behaviours. That, combined with Covid-19, means there is a crisis brewing in our primary schools.

In special education, one of the two practical solutions we could put in place very quickly is administrative deputy principals for special schools. Our special schools do not really meet the numbers border for any of the general allocations given out to mainstream primary schools. This is because in special schools, it is about need rather than numbers. The other thing that would be incredibly helpful to special is the reintroduction of something along the lines of class hours. That was incredibly beneficial because of the flexibility built into it. We do not have substitution now for the first day of absenteeism, which is enormously problematic in special education where you cannot divide classes out among other teachers. It was mentioned earlier that we know who the caring person is in our schools and who can be there when a child needs someone that minute, when they are incredibly anxious or they are having a crisis or an anxiety or panic attack or whatever it is. You need the flexibility to have somebody there at that moment. Something along the lines of the class hours would give schools that flexibility.

Chairman

I could write books on mobile phones; I have children myself. Mr. McGorman, you spoke about the supports in primary schools compared to secondary. That is something I have raised with the Minister here on numerous occasions. I will give the example of the primary school where my own children go, St. Aidan's Primary School in Enniscorthy, where there are up to 1,000 pupils. They have a principal and the vice principals are kind of teaching; there is no walking vice principal in that size of a school. When you go to a secondary school, where there could be 350 students, there is a principal and a walking vice principal. What is needed to get the larger primary schools the same services as the secondary schools? I mean no disrespect to the secondary schools, they need them and deserve them, but so do primary schools. As you said, specifically in the senior cycle in primary schools, they are now having similar issues and problems that secondary schools had a number of years ago, in that children are now having anxiety problems and are facing issues in life, whether it involves mobile phones or whatever. They are having these problems at a younger age.

Mr. Enda McGorman

I thank the Cathaoirleach for the question. It is a real question for us as school leaders at primary level. There are two priorities for school leaders at primary level, from a leadership development point of view. The point about the role of the teaching principal has to made as well. Up to 40% of our schools have teaching principals, meaning that the principal in those schools has teaching duties, as well as the deputy principal. It would be remiss of me to address this issue without addressing that as well. It is not just large schools that need the support of an administrative deputy principal. If you are a teaching principal in-role as a teacher, you have all of the responsibilities is that have been laid out here as well. Chaos and stress do not choose when they arrive on a particular day. All human life is represented in our schools. Our teaching principals are right at the coalface concerning this issue.

On administrative status for deputy principals, again, our post-primary cousins have been very successful in raising that and having that addressed as an issue. We have had to balance between a call for administrative deputy principals and support for our teaching principals, who get one administrative day a week now. That is something for which we were fighting for years. As a result of the pandemic, it was given and we have retained it. However, that does not diminish the call for administrative deputy principals. If we were to ask the why of it here at this committee, it is about supporting the co-ordination of special education needs because it has become so complex at primary level. It has become the catch-all for everything. Special education needs has been used to cover every single thing we have talked about here, as well as the cognitive developmental issues that children have in mainstream education and their educational needs. If we were to make a recommendation around this, it would be to support the co-ordination of special education needs. That would be one massive area which could encompass or include or allow for the management of special education needs as part of the role of an administrative deputy principal.

It is down to economics, resources and priorities at the end of the day. The Department will consider an administrative deputy principal in very large schools, but we would be anxious for that to be pulled down. If there are schools where there are more than two special classes or a class for children with autism, those schools also get administrative deputy principals. The principle has been conceded and it is down to budget and priorities, ultimately, as to how it is allocated on a year-to-year basis. Certainly, every year the IPPN makes submissions as part of the budgetary submission in relation to our teaching principals and administrative status for larger schools as well.

Chairman

Take the example of St. Aidan's primary school in Enniscorthy. It has a special needs unit. It is a mainstream school with a staff of 60 or 70. If that was a company, it would have two or three bosses at the top, whereas it does not have that with 1,000 pupils.

It is absolutely mad that this has not been addressed. There is a huge expectation on principals and vice principals. There is more responsibility being heaped on them, not on a weekly, but almost on a daily basis. There are more expectations from parents regarding the way children are taught and that goes back to the principal as well. This is something that the Department of Education has to address quickly. Unfortunately, it has fallen on deaf ears when I have raised it here for the last two and a half years. Covid has really highlighted the issue. I have nothing against post-primary. It deserves this, but that model has to be looked at in the context of primary education.

Mr. Enda McGorman

We talk about our special schools, in particular, schools with additional classes and the number of SNAs, bus escorts and everyone else added to the staff. School principals and deputy principals are only allocated on the number of whole-time teaching positions. It is completely blind to all the other work that schools have to do. A special school could have a staff of 40 SNAs and 50 bus escorts and all of this has to be managed. No recognition is given, either in the staffing allocation or, indeed, in pay. The pay scale of principals in these schools does not reflect the number of staff on roll; it just reflects the number of mainstream teachers. This is always very low because the number of pupils in these schools is low but the staff need is massively high. That has not been recognised by the system and it is a massive issue. It would be the same issue in our special schools as in mainstream schools with high numbers of children with autism spectrum disorder, ASD.

Mr. Paul Crone

The National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, NAPD, in partnership with the Irish Primary Principals' Network, IPPN, conducted a survey of principals and deputy principals at primary and post-primary levels. We have compared it to a healthy working population in Denmark and to the school leaders in New Zealand. That data in relation to the health, wellbeing and workload of school leaders are from a 2022 survey. It has been shared with the Department of Education. I am prepared to share our data with the committee, if it would like us to do so. The data show that, on average, school leaders are spending 30 hours per week on administration and 40% of them are working in excess of 60 hours per week. It is a huge piece of work, with internationally compared data. It is available and I am prepared to share it.

Chairman

I would like to add to that before I bring in Mr. Curtis. Principals, whether at primary level or second level, do not get the same holidays. They are back in school in the first week in August. They are back in the school arranging for the following year.

I have another question. What percentage of kids would have an SNA in primary school who would carry that on into secondary school?

Mr. John Curtis

I would not have a percentage.

Mr. Paul Crone

That system has changed. The SNA is now allocated to the school and not to the child, so a student has what is called "access to" an SNA.

Chairman

How many kids who would have had access to an SNA in a primary school would have access to one in a secondary school?

Mr. John Curtis

You would have access. The turnover would be fairly similar. If you have that assistance at primary school, it tends to transfer, although not automatically.

I want to come back to a point Mr. McGorman made in the context of the SNAs and extra staff principals have to deal with now. It is a very important issue. It is only really coming into play in the last ten years during which time the number of SNAs in schools has increased. The extra staffing that principals have to manage is not reflected in any way, shape or form in the context of allocation to the schools or the salary earned by a principal. This is something that will have to be looked at. Fundamentally, what has been said about deputy principals is correct. In our submission, we made three fundamental points. One was around provision of guidance counsellors, one was around inter-agency co-operation and the final one around trying to give time to principals, as leaders in the school, to deal with the problem kids and the students in their care. Any way we can augment the provision of deputy principalships in our schools, we think that is huge.

We are very concerned about burnout among principals at the moment. During Covid things settled a little at school level because things quietened down to some extent but we are becoming more concerned now that there is burnout. Principals put up with a lot during Covid, they did an awful lot and they gave a lot of themselves. We think the best supports for schools come in at the deputy principal level, whether at primary level or post primary level.

Chairman

I have three examples in Wexford where the principals retired and I was sure the deputy principals would take up the positions. However, they had no interest in them because of the commitment required and the fact they would not be adequately rewarded for doing it. I know a principal who has stepped back because the number in the school and the workload have increased as have the pressures. The assistance is not forthcoming.

Mr. Paul Crone

It is all in the survey. The survey shows that 80% of principals and deputy principals are experiencing moderate to severe burnout and 60% of them are experiencing moderate to severe stress. It is all in the report and it is very clear. We need to relieve school leaders of the administrative burden.

Mr. Craig Petrie

I would hate for people to get the impression that in looking at post-primary schools, primary schools could be fixed. I would agree with what Mr. Curtis said about the need for more deputy principals in our system. I happen to come from a smaller school and because we have fewer than 400 pupils, we get 0.75 of a deputy principal. We actually have two deputy principals because she is that good. However, that is what we are relying on. As part of the Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools, ACCS, we would also advocate for a mandatory second deputy principal in all DEIS schools because of the additional burden that comes with home-school liaison and with the DEIS planning. It is an area where we desperately need more help.

Chairman

I am not sure if Mr. McGorman is aware of it but St. Aidan's primary school is a DEIS school as well.

I would like to thank all the witnesses for coming in today. The discussion has been very beneficial to all the members. Some valuable insights and extensive experience and knowledge on Irish school life were exchanged and I very much thank the witnesses for that.

The joint committee adjourned at 1.18 p.m. until 6.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 19 October 2022.