Debate contribution: Special Educational Needs: Crisis in Provision

Debate contribution by Mr Peter Martin on 8 September 2025.

MLA

Mr Peter Martin

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

8 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Special Educational Needs: Crisis in Provision

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5068783

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I commend the Member opposite for making a very passionate speech about special educational needs and not making it political. I mean that genuinely, Danny. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the issue today. I start by recognising its sensitivity for many parents in Northern Ireland. I also recognise the amazing work of our special needs teachers, who work under sometimes very challenging circumstances. I also pay tribute to the amazing children, some of whom have those particular needs, and the parents who care for and look after them on a daily basis. I will come back to that later on, but I am sure that everyone in the Chamber recognises that the current system is simply not good enough and does fail some children in Northern Ireland. To pick up quickly on Mr Carroll's statement, what we actually want is not necessarily for every child to have a classroom assistant, because that may not be the best intervention for every child. There may be better interventions that deliver more support, more help and more positivity in that child's life than one-to-one support will. There are lots of measures, but we have to bear in mind that we want the best for the child. That should be at the core of whatever the policy driver is. It is worth quickly noting a couple of pertinent facts. We know that one in five children in our education system now has a special educational need. That is about 70,000 children across Northern Ireland. About 8% of children subsequently have a statutory assessment. We know that demand has risen significantly in the past number of years, and the EA has responded in the past five years by creating an additional 6,000 SEN places. Expenditure by the Department has increased over the past seven years by 164%, rising to £670 million a year. As I mentioned previously, I recognise that there have been, and remain, significant challenges in the system. That has led to some heartbreaking cases emerging. Members of the Education Committee have sat through some of those stories. There has been an erosion of confidence among teachers, principals, parents and carers in the system's ability to support some of our most vulnerable learners. It would be foolish of me to say anything other than that.

One of the key strategic shifts that we need is to move away from a system that operates on a tactical basis to one that is more strategic in its thinking. Simply put, let us prepare not for next year but for the next 10 years. The Minister, who will, I feel confident, speak for himself on the issue, has already committed to do that. A plan — it was called 'Operational Plan 2', I think — has been designed to ensure that, in future, planning is not emergency planning but future planning. That will break the cycle that Members have mentioned today. As the Member for Lagan Valley said, we need additional special schools. There are eight in programme as part of the Department's new SEN capital agenda. We also have a SEN reform agenda, of which, as I mentioned, I have a copy with me. It is a comprehensive plan. We know that its cost is just over half a billion pounds. That half a billion pounds is not in the Education Minister's gift. It is not particularly in the Finance Minister's gift, but it is in the Executive's gift. As was made clear and as the Member for West Belfast noted, we have a SEN-first agenda, so I am sure that the Minister in front of me will look for support from other Ministers and Executive parties —.

I will indeed for the Chair of the Education Committee.

Outstanding. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I agree with the Member, but I will give him a line from the end of the document:

"Costings will be finessed in detailed implementation plans and in collaboration with key delivery partners."

It sounds to me as though the costing is being worked on but that key inputs from delivery partners have to be fed in. I do not disagree with the Member, and the Minister may touch on this, but that statement is in the document, and I assume that the costing is being worked on. There are targets. We will not fall out over them. The proposers of the motion would like to see clearer delivery targets. I note that there are hard targets for year 1 in the document already and starting targets for all other themes. I understand that those targets are linear. Perhaps the proposers of the motion would like harder targets: those may come with additional information as the Department works through the detailed costings for the plan. Let us be honest, however: the Education Committee wanted this document. We talked and talked about it, we wanted to see it, and we got it. It is a complex and important document, so I am not overly surprised that we are still waiting for some detail on it. These are big issues to solve, as every Member has said. I have 15 seconds left. The Education Minister is passionate about making these changes. Our party is wholly committed to standing behind him in making them, because we know that, at the end of every policy, there is a child with a family —

— and their own individual story.

906 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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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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