The Minister for Education and Skills Joe McHugh T.D. today (2nd April) invited contributions and views from the general public including schools, parents, young people and services working with young people on the use of physical intervention in the prevention and management of crisis student behaviour in school.

All schools have policies and procedures in place to ensure that the school environment is safe and conducive to good teaching and learning and the promotion of student wellbeing. A variety of supports including guidance, advice and professional development options is available to support school management and teachers in this work. The evidence from the inspectorate and other services that visit schools is that these policies are effective and in general, most students have a positive education experience. However, schools are evolving places where the variety of need presented by students is becoming more complex and the challenge for the system is to ensure there are sufficient supports in place to ensure all students receive an education in accordance with their needs and circumstances.

The National Council for Special Education (NCSE) has advised the Department of the need to develop guidelines for schools on the prevention and management of student crisis situations in schools. These guidelines will be evidence-based and will complement the statutory guidelines on School Codes of Behaviour published by Tusla in 2008.

An expert Working Group has been established to develop the Guidelines to assist schools in managing crisis situations. It is intended to publish the Guidelines later this year. Contributions and views of the public are now being invited to inform the work. For this purpose, an online questionnaire is available for completion from today.

In announcing this call for submissions, Minister McHugh said: “It is important that we capture the experience and views of schools, teachers, parents and young people and others at this stage of the work. These views will complement the research, both local and international, which is currently being examined by the Group.”

It is expected that draft Guidelines will be published before the summer and will be the subject of consultation with the education partners and others before they are finalised.

The Guidelines will apply to all recognised schools and will place a strong focus on prevention and early intervention strategies for the management of crisis student behaviour in which physical intervention may be employed only as the last part of a comprehensive, positive and planned behavioural approach by the school.

The Guidelines will be informed by the evidence which shows that whole-school positive behavioural approaches and early and ongoing engagement with the school community, including parents, are necessary for the development of effective school policy and practice.

The Minister concluded “the input of the public will be greatly appreciated and all contributions will be treated as confidential.”

The online questionnaire is available from today on the Department of Education and Skills’ website at the following link and will remain open to receive submissions until 4pm on Monday 15th April 2019.

Source: Education.ie

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