Drawing on data from the Irish longitudinal Growing Up in Ireland study, this paper examines school engagement levels among boys and girls with and without special educational needs (SEN) in Irish primary schools and again on transition in secondary education. The survey provides rich data from multiple informants on over 8,500 9 year olds, with a second survey wave examining their experiences at 13 years of age, shortly after entering secondary education. Although there has been a vast amount of research done on the importance of school engagement, there is a notable absence of ‘student voice’ in the literature (Parsons and Taylor 2011). The Growing Up in Ireland Study is unique in that it allows the researcher to tap into the cognitive and affective domains of children’s experiences, such as their reported self-concept. While the findings show important differences in terms of the different dimensions of school engagement for children with and without SEN, they also illustrate that predictors of disengagement are about more than the child’s SEN status; the interaction of SEN type, gender and social class are crucial in obtaining a more complete understanding of school engagement and the impact of engagement while in primary school on school engagement during the early stages of secondary education. The longitudinal analysis builds upon early findings from the first (cross-sectional) survey, highlighting the role of both academic and social engagement in understanding school engagement among children with special educational needs (McCoy and Banks, 2012). Earlier analysis also highlighted the interaction of social class and gender with SEN identification processes (Banks et al., 2012) and the influence of school social mix (McCoy et al., 2012).

Banks, J., M. Shevlin and S. McCoy (2012) ‘Disproportionality in special education: identifying children with emotional behavioural difficulties in Irish primary schools’, European Journal of Special Needs Education, 27(2): 219-235. McCoy, S. and J. Banks (2012) ‘Simply Academic? Why Children with special educational needs don’t like school’, European Journal of Special Needs Education, 27(1): 81-97. McCoy, S., J. Banks and M. Shevlin (2012). ‘School matters: how context influences the identification of different types of special educational needs’, Irish Educational Studies, 31 (2): 119-138. Taylor, L. and J. Parsons (2011) ‘Improving Student Engagement’, Current Issues in Education 14(1), http://cie.asu.edu/