Debate contribution: Special Educational Needs: Crisis in Provision

Debate contribution by Mrs Michelle Guy on 8 September 2025.

MLA

Mrs Michelle Guy

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

8 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Special Educational Needs: Crisis in Provision

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5068732

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am proud that our first motion after recess focuses on children with special educational needs. That group of children and their families feel largely invisible and forgotten until the annual SEND crisis placement comes around. Placements are an acute issue that is worthy of our time and scrutiny. We are now a week into September, and the fact that we still have children who are without a school place, or who are unable to access their place, is a scandal. It is a consequence of a failure to plan properly for those children. It is so important today that we understand the full extent of the crisis in SEND. There is a hidden group of children who are absent, on reduced timetables or informally excluded for reasons related to the school environment. I cannot give you a figure for them because the Education Authority (EA) does not capture that data. We also have 2,500 children going through the statementing process who need support. There are also issues with transport related to safeguarding concerns, with escorts not having completed AccessNI checks. As the two amendments highlight, there are acute concerns around workforce, particularly classroom assistants, with a concern that the Department may restrict one-to-one support. We have seen nursing support withdrawn from some special school settings. We do not have enough special schools in Northern Ireland, and those that we do have are having to support children with ever more challenging needs. The transition between stages of education is woefully under-resourced, leaving children without suitable options post-16 and post-19. Those points illustrate a much bigger crisis than simply placements, so much so that we are having an inquiry in the Education Committee into SEN provision. Behind every statistic is a child and a family left living with the stress, uncertainty and injustice of their child not receiving the education to which they are entitled. To quote the independent autism reviewer, Ema Cubitt:

"One child out of education is one child too many".

It is our job to acknowledge system failures, but I acknowledge the brilliant work that is happening in our schools. In my constituency of Lagan Valley, as in every part of Northern Ireland, there are wonderful teachers, classroom assistants and health professionals who pour their energy into helping children to thrive. Special schools and mainstream schools alike are doing incredible work, often against the odds. They deserve our thanks and support. For the families being failed and abandoned, our job today is to demand accountability. Let us look now to the annual placement crisis. Children with statutory statements are left without a school place at the start of term. Others are allocated a place that looks fine on paper but is impractical, inaccessible or unable to meet their needs. Others are placed in contingency arrangements that are far from acceptable. Some receive only a few hours of home tuition, some wait indefinitely for special school places and some are offered a school that cannot meet their needs, yet we do not have clear data on how many children are affected. The Education Authority created over 1,300 places last year. I acknowledge that effort. However, even it admits that that approach is unsustainable. Schools that took in extra children last year cannot keep stretching endlessly. We are now staring into an even worse crisis in 2026. I want to make a point about the role that schools can play. I completely agree that all schools need to open their doors to children with special educational needs and disabilities not just because it is the right thing to do but because I hear time and time again that the schools that do so quickly find out that all children benefit. The schools that outright refuse to take children without providing any rationale for that should be held to account. However, some school leaders have genuine concerns about the resourcing, staff and building requirements that they need to ensure that they can give all children what they need to thrive. The issue is ensuring that resources are planned. Letters from the Minister in June and from the EA chief executive later in June are not a strategy; they are too little, too late. The system is surviving on firefighting and goodwill, not on planning or resourcing. When the SEN reform agenda and delivery plan was published earlier this year, there was hope that it might finally chart a way forward, and we welcomed its ambition at the time. However, look at it closely. There are no clear timescales for delivery, no detailed breakdown of costs, no workforce planning in partnership with the Department of Health and a worrying reliance on pilots and aspirations rather than hard commitments. Parents who have been failed for years do not need more

strategies; they need action, services and support, and they need them now. The Minister will, of course, talk about funding, and that is reasonable. More schools than ever are operating in a deficit, but, while rightly pointing to his constrained budget, the Minister also continues to champion additional bureaucracy instead of creating a single management authority. He has put no plan in place to rightsize our school estate. In opposition to the independent review of education, he championed Strule, which is taking an incredible amount of capital funding. This is about making hard decisions, which he appears incapable of doing in this context. Of course, he was happy to resign his position as First Minister to collapse the Assembly. It cannot be denied that those two years being lost made this situation substantially worse. That decision, which he was happy to make, made this crisis deeper. The constant collapse of this place is contributing to the funding issues in Education and other Departments but, specifically, the crisis impacting on the SEN system. We need an area planning approach to SEN, not just ad hoc letters and last-minute scrambling. Every child should have the option to be educated in their local community without families being put through the stress of fighting for transport or waiting months for a placement. Let us not forget the workforce. Classroom assistants, teachers and therapists are crying out for investment, training and support. They are the backbone of SEN provision, and, without them, any strategy will fail. The workforce plan needs to be done in partnership with the Department of Health, and there should be a joint budget. Two amendments have been selected, and both add to the debate. Procedurally, we cannot pass both amendments, but that should not lessen the points that they raise. Gerry Carroll's amendment rightly calls for a guarantee that every pupil who needs one-to-one support from a SEN classroom assistant will receive it. That is a simple and basic commitment, and I hope that the Minister will make that commitment today. Timothy Gaston's amendment highlights the vital role of classroom assistants. Too many are in temporary contracts, and too many are underpaid. There are also too few opportunities for career progression. Ulster University research from earlier this year showed that 82% feel that they are unfairly paid and that over three quarters want a clear career pathway. Those workers are the backbone of SEN provision. They deserve respect, stability and investment. The truth is that we have reached a point where the system is being propped up by goodwill, exhausted parents and overstretched staff. That is not sustainable, and it is not fair on the children whom we are here to serve. Today, let us be clear. The Minister must provide clarity on the number of children who remain without an appropriate place; he must publish clear, costed and time-bound plans for delivery; and he must prioritise those children and families, because they cannot wait any longer.

1,302 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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