Supporting EAL pupils with Special Educational Needs/Additional Educational Needs across the island of Ireland.

The project will engage with schools and professional education networks on how best to support EAL pupils with SEN across the island of Ireland. A public consultation undertaken by the Department of Education (2019) in NI, raised concerns regarding EAL with SEN provision, including getting an assessment for SEN, school slowness/unwillingness to accept information from the home country and in providing additional support. In RoI, little guidance is provided to support teachers in providing adequate support for EAL learners (Burke, 2018, Department of Education, 2024). Furthermore, in the absence of clarity surrounding the SENCO role in the Irish context, and no roadmap or guidance for SENCOs (Fitzgerald and Radford, 2020) a key aim of this research is the development of processes and practices for SENCOs in promoting schoolwide approaches to supporting EAL pupils with SEN. Burke (2018) stresses the need for more specific guidance for both teachers and professionals in the Irish education system, on how EAL learners with additional needs can be accommodated within schools. The project will use a mixed methods approach for data collection and align with an explanatory sequential design approach (Creswell and Clarke, 2011). Trends relating to the scope of provision can be ascertained from quantitative surveys, which in turn will inform the sequential qualitative interviews providing a richer insight into the procedures and provisions employed for EAL with SEN pupils within schools in NI and RoI (McKenney and Reeves, 2018).