Newly published guidelines aimed at providing individual learning plans for children with special needs were yesterday heralded as a significant step in Irish education by the National Council for Special Education.
The Individual Education Plan guidelines present a checklist of the essential elements required for each individual child's experience at primary and post-primary level in an effort to ensure that no child is "left behind", said Tom Murray, chairperson of the council.
The plan's guidelines, which are not yet a statutory requirement in schools, cover aspects such as the nature and degree of each child's abilities, skills and talents, their special educational needs and educational performance.
Such plans are included in the Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004 which must be implemented by 2009. Implementation of the guidelines in the 4,000 schools countrywide will provide each child with special needs a "road map" charting his or her development over the course of each 12-month plan.
"We recognise there are issues with regard to resources but these will be addressed in our implementation report, which has to be submitted by October, and we then hope that the IEPs [ uidelines] will be one of the earlier provisions of the Act to be implemented," he said.
Launching the guidelines yesterday, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin said the publication marked an important day for children with special needs and the wider community of parents, teachers, school authorities and boards of management. "There are 15,500 people working in our schools with children with special needs . . . That is a huge investment, that is a huge number," the Minister said.