Independents criticise special needs provisions

A COUNTY Kildare school whose number of special needs assistants were cut, asked a parent not to send their child to school because they “couldn’t be accommodated safely in that environment”, Independent TD Catherine Murphy told the Dáil.

“That’s a disgrace,” she said, highlighting the crisis in special needs assistance. “There are things that just have to be safeguarded and that kind of situation just simply can’t be allowed to continue.” Ms Murphy, a TD for Kildare North, said the “voices of parents, teachers, special needs assistants and other resource providers together with experts must all play a part in designing the service”.

She was introducing a Private Members’ debate by Independent TDs, calling for a reversal of the 10 per cent cut in resource hours; the development of a centrally led approach to educational support that included parents as educational partners; the establishment of a system of accreditation so special needs assistants could train and qualify as learning support assistants; and the introduction of an independent appeals process.

The Independent TD criticised a lack of transparency in the system, when it took parents months or years to get a special needs assistant and it “took 15 minutes to withdraw that service. That was about economics. That wasn’t about education”. Minister of State for Education Seán Sherlock said, however, that he wanted to “reassure all parents of children with special educational needs that their children will continue to have access to an education appropriate to their needs”. Mr Sherlock was speaking for Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn who was in Chicago on Government business.

The Minister stressed that €1.3 billion would be spent this year supporting children with special needs but the Government would not “revisit the previous government’s decision to place a cap on the number of posts available under the special needs assistant scheme”. He said there were 10,575 such posts available for the coming school year, and the number of posts had risen from 2,988 in 2001 at a cost of €33.7 million to 10,543 last year costing more than €340 million.

Mr Sherlock said review of the scheme concluded that it had moved away from the objectives originally envisaged, “which was to provide for children’s care needs in an educational setting and has moved towards involvement in behavioural therapeutic, pedagogical and administrative duties”. He added that “schools and parents have come to expect the allocation of special needs assistant posts for students whose care needs do not meet the terms of the scheme”.

It was critically important that parents and schools understand the “care role” of the assistants and that they are “not used to supplement teaching or as therapeutic support for students”.