Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 12 December 2017
471. Deputy Denise Mitchell asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the consultations that were undertaken with parents, teachers, early years providers and representative groups in advance of the announcement of the removal of the early childhood care and education, ECCE, overage exemption. [52994/17]
Amharc ar fhreagraOn Wednesday 6th December I announced that I have paused a decision on this matter so that further consultation with parents will occur. Since ECCE was introduced in 2010, approximately 500 children availed of the exemption each year, although for reasons set out below, it was expected that much fewer than this would have applied in 2018.
This original decision to remove the overage exemption was made with the Department of Education and Skills (DES) and in close collaboration with members of the AIM Cross-Sectoral Implementation Group, which includes representatives from the Department of Education and Skills, the National Council for Special Education (NCSE), the National Disability Authority, the HSE, City and County Childcare Committees, a representative of parents of children with special needs and a representative of early years providers.
There was broad agreement from the DES, NCSE and other stakeholders that, in light of the very significant developments and improvements to free pre-school education, both in terms of the two year duration of ECCE and the range of supports available, and the very significant supports that are in place for children in primary schools, the overage exemption would no longer support the overarching policy aim that children should transition to primary school with their peers. The decision acknowledged the supports provided by the relevant primary school, the National Council for Special Education and other bodies as required.
It is important that I set out the rationale for the original decision. The recent announcement of changes was designed to support the achievement of better outcomes for children with disabilities. No child would have lost out as a result of the overage exemption being removed.
Overage exemptions were introduced at the onset of the ECCE programme in 2010. At that time, the ECCE Programme only operated for a 38 week period, or one programme year. For some children with special/additional needs, attending preschool five days a week was not feasible and so an allowance was made to enable them split ECCE over 2 years, for example, a child may have availed of 3 days ECCE provision in year one and 2 days in year two. Their total ECCE provision remained at 38 weeks.
In order to facilitate this, in the cases where the child would have been over the age limit for ECCE (5 years and 6 months when finishing ECCE) an overage exemption was approved. This flexibility was never intended to conflict with the legislative requirement to start school by age six. The law and policy on school start-age is clearly established in Ireland. Children should be in school by the time they are six years of age and the primary school system has a variety of resources to support children with disabilities. If children are not in school by six, under the Educational Welfare Act, the Educational Welfare service of Tusla must be satisfied that the child is receiving a minimum standard of education in a place other than a recognised school. Tusla does this by sending Educational Welfare Inspectors out to the place of the child's education. Should this be required, this would be in addition to the Early Years Inspectorates funded by my Department.
Since ECCE was first introduced, DCYA has worked, with some success, to improve the pre-school experience for children with disabilities and to optimise their early development. The two main enhancements are:
- ECCE entitlement currently averages at 61 weeks, up from 38 weeks, and it will expand further to 76 weeks from September 2018. This is in keeping with good international practice.
- The Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) has been introduced with 7 different levels of support for children with disabilities. Over 4,000 children have so far benefited from targeted supports and many multiples of this from universal supports available under AIM.
Purely in the best interests of children, and for no other reason, a proposal was considered to remove the overage exemption to the upper age limit to the Programme. This was signalled last year, but in order to give longer notice to parents and providers, the planned introduction was delayed until September 2018. The motivation underpinning this development is entirely evidence based. Children with a disability benefit from early intervention, high quality early childhood care and education and high quality primary school education. In this regard my Department is complementing the work of the HSE's role in early intervention and the Department of Educations and Skills' role in high quality primary school education by:
- expanding the ECCE programme so that all children have access to a full 76 weeks, double what was available in 2010.
- providing access to the comprehensive suite of resources under the Access and Inclusion model (AIM), introduced in September 2016.
The evidence is that children with a disability should start school with their peers once they have access to high quality and inclusive primary school education. The evidence is also that they should become teenagers with their peers and transition to secondary school with their peers.
Notwithstanding the strong evidence base underpinning this proposal as being in the best interests of the children concerned, and the significant enhancements to the ECCE scheme in terms of two years' duration and access to AIM supports; measures which effectively address the reasons for introducing the overage exemptions in the first place, I am also conscious of the need to listen further to those with concerns. To this end, as stated above, I have paused the proposed change and committed to consulting more widely with parents of children with disabilities. I have also committed to having this consultation completed by mid 2018.
