30/09/2026
[This essay is written by a parent and member of Féach and shared with permission. We hope it opens a conversation about others' experiences with the Visiting Teacher service.]
The Visiting Teacher Disservice
The Visiting Teacher service ostensibly provides support to visually impaired children in Ireland from birth to the end of their education. The NCSE website provides a glowing account of the service. However, as an end user of the service I experience this like the inverse of the Ronseal ad - they do nothing of what they say on the tin. Much like when governments report to the UN on their progress under human rights conventions and then the national NGOs do shadow reports on people’s actual experience on the ground, this is my shadow report.
Deprecation of permanent posts
Over a decade ago, the decision was taken to no longer give visiting teachers permanent contracts and instead hire them on one year contracts at a time. As a result of this decision, my daughter has had no less than 6 visiting teachers in 12 years as has every other child in her constituency.
Dearth of experience
Each person that has occupied the role of visiting teacher for my child has had as little experience with visual impairment in education as the last. Without exception, none had any experience with vision impairment from day one - unapologetically so at that. One visiting teacher said to me: “I’m so glad I met you on the first day in this job. I’m learning so much from you.” Could you imagine any other professional service in which someone said this to you? Imagine the architect designing your house extension told you they were learning so much from you about architecture from their first day. Would you feel confident the roof would stay up? Now extrapolate that to a 2nd class child coming out of Covid lockdown in need of support in mainstream education and that’s exactly what happened.
Ratios exceeding 100:1
According to the NCSE each visiting teacher works in a region and has “a number of students to support”. According to my multitude of visiting teachers, they have more than 100 children on their books. A visiting teacher, as the name suggests, is expected to visit the child at their school. There is a required minimum of 182 primary school days in every year - factor in travel time and I’ll let you do the math. Mine made an average of 1-2 visits per year. From what I hear from other parents, it is quite usual to get no contact and no visits for a year or even two years.
Superficial visits
The NCSE website lists seven different ways the visiting teacher supports the school and the child during a school visit. From what my daughter’s school told me, the impression I came away with was that these visits were tolerated by the school at best and were not in any way additive. The visiting teacher would almost never tell me as the parent when they were going to visit the school nor would I get a report afterwards so I had no idea what they were doing or why. I would only find out through my child or the school that they had visited after the fact. From speaking to other parents I know, this is a common experience across the board. When I asked the school once what had taken place during the visit, I was told by my child’s slightly bemused class teacher that the visiting teacher had taught the whole class a festive song. So very far from the claim on the NCSE website that they would “model teaching approaches”.
Untrained visiting teachers
When the visiting teacher did try to do something useful, in my experience they were entirely ill-equipped and untrained to do so. I was informed a few years ago by the visiting teacher at the time that she wanted to do a functional vision assessment on my child. I agreed as this could be very useful. I later found out it was the first one they had ever done and, despite multiple requests to get a copy of said assessment, to this day I have never received it. The NCSE describes visiting teachers on the website as “qualified teachers with specialist skills” and will tell you they send all their teachers on a course in the UK on visual impairment and education. What they won't tell you is the course starts after they take up the role and takes 2 years to complete part-time. By the time they’re in any way trained their contract has expired and they’ve moved on.
Lack of assistive technology skills and training
The NCSE website claims visiting teachers will “discuss and show how to use assistive technologies”. My child’s school’s experience was that when provided with the technology (Connect 12, Looky Book) they got zero support or guidance on how to use it and instead took it upon themselves to search up YouTube videos to upskill. Similarly, my spouse and I spent much time on the phone to the company in the UK that sell the devices for tech support and advice. I did have one visiting teacher give me a printout from the internet on how to use a device that she said she was still trying to figure out. I took the morning off work to receive this “training”. In a world where tech is moving so fast and providing so much empowerment to people with low vision, this is a necessary skill of the job.
The US experience
In the US, they have a similar service called the Vision Teacher. An Irish friend of mine in the US with a visually impaired child experiences this service as extremely positive. My friend described her child receiving 3 visits a month from her vision teacher from when she was in day care and how they attended all ophthalmology visits with her to provide practical support. Now that her child is in school, the vision teacher provides all tech support. Meanwhile, back in Ireland, our visiting teacher became uncontactable at the start of this academic year and parents have been reaching out by email and phone for over a month to no reply. It was only when contacted by the advocacy group Féach that the NCSE deigned to put on an auto-reply on the email alias of the visiting teacher and update the contact details for visiting teachers on their website. These are visually impaired children going into secondary school for the first time, entering exam years or starting junior infants and not only are they deprived of support during this transition they don't even get a reply to their various requests for the support that they are entitled to.
Shameful
It is shameful to provide a service as poor as this, particularly to young children who have so much potential in life. Visually impaired people born today in Ireland are experiencing a tech revolution that is empowering them in ways never seen before. The expectations and quality of life of these children is exponentially higher than we have ever experienced. They are becoming lawyers and civil servants and physiotherapists and doctors. This is in spite of the extremely subpar visiting teacher disservice they received. Every visually impaired child deserves a good start in life, especially from the service that is being funded by Irish taxpayers - such as their parents - to provide it.
