Special Educational Needs

Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 22 January 2025

Wednesday, 22 January 2025

Questions (505)

Sorca Clarke

Question:

505. Deputy Sorca Clarke asked the Minister for Education if she will publish sTen outcomes for deaf and hard of hearing students. [46507/24]

Written answers

Minister of State at the Department of Education

The Department does not gather literacy or numeracy data relating to specific groups of children or young people.  Schools provide information to the Department on outcomes in standardised literacy and numeracy tests.  However, this data is provided in aggregated form only. 

The Department of Education has established a working group comprising NCSE, NEPS, Inspectorate, Central Policy Unit and the Special Education Unit of the Department.  This group is considering the topic of educational outcomes across a range of areas including student engagement, attainment, attendance, happiness, independence and progress.

The intended outputs of the group include the development of a framework for schools that will enable them to monitor and record outcomes in these areas.

Recognising the critical importance of evidence informed policy making, it is also intended that the framework will be sufficiently flexible such that school level information and data will be available to the Department as a means of informing policy for students with special or additional needs.

In tandem with this, the NCSE Research and Evaluation team together with Visiting Teachers of children who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH) students or Blind/Vision Impaired (BVI) have commenced a study of outcomes for students who have availed of the service.

The NCSE’s Research and Evaluation team intends reporting on school leavers who are DHH or BVI who have left school in 22/23 or 23/24, to establish their post-school pathway.

The NCSE’s Sensory Inclusion Team and Research and Evaluation team have now gathered information from school leavers and are analysing data collected. It is anticipated that initial findings from this analysis will be made available to the Department before the year end, with a view to publishing the study of outcomes in Quarter 1, 2025.