Resource teaching hours to be retained
The 455 posts sanctioned by the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) will allow pupils continue to receive 85% of the weekly hours recommended by the Department of Education in 2005. However, after hundreds more teachers were allocated for pupils with disabilities for the rest of this school year, those staff will have to be spread more thinly in schools where children are assessed as needing support after the first three weeks of the term.
After a week of public pressure in June, Mr Quinn reversed plans to reduce that provision to 75% when the Cabinet allowed him to breach a limit on the number of resource teachers the NCSE can sanction.
However, NCSE head of operations, Sé Goulding, said around 20 posts it may still appoint will only go to emergency applications, such as a child at one of the few hundred schools with no resource teaching allocation already. Because applications closed on Sept 20, the schools of other pupils who get a standard assessment will have to cater for their needs from existing staff for the remaining eight months of the school year.
The teaching posts assigned yesterday bring to 5,700 the number of resource teachers sanctioned at 3,750 primary and second-level schools, 435 more than the previous cap.
Mr Quinn told reporters last week that the €33m extra he has been allocated next year for special education includes a provision to maintain the 85% provision beyond this school year and into Sept 2014.
A new model is being worked on by the NCSE to allow special needs teachers be assigned based on each school’s overall needs rather than each individual pupil’s diagnosis, but the current system will continue for at least another two years.
The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation said that while an improvement on the 75% resource hours first announced in June was welcome, it cannot be glossed over that there has been a 15% cut in special needs teaching. “The additional posts announced by the NCSE will simply allow schools to keep pace with increased demand resulting from better and more effective identification of special needs,” said a spokesperson.
The NCSE said it is continuing to approve additional special needs assistant hours to schools on foot of incoming applications, and it is still inside the cap of 10,575 SNAs it is allowed to sanction by the Department of Education. While around 10,500 are employed in schools, Mr Quinn said last week that the limit would probably be breached before the end of 2013.
A service in which 45 teachers work with 2,700 pupils with hearing and visual impairments is being reviewed for the Department of Education.
It has brought in two international experts to examine the visiting teacher service for children with hearing and visual impairment (VTHVI) on foot of advice from the National Council for Special Education.
Under the terms of reference, seen by the Irish Examiner, the reviewers are free to recommend the service remain as a standalone function. But the documents sent to the reviewers point to much-increased supports for children with special needs since the service was set up in the 1970s, including the availability of resource teachers, special needs assistants and assistive technology, supports for mainstream teachers, and a range of health service interventions and policy recommendations.
The reviewers are Dr Michael McLinden, professor at the school of education in University of Birmingham’s disability, inclusion and special needs department, and Dr Wendy McCracken who is professor in education of the deaf at University of Manchester.
They are asked to have regard for resource constraints on the Department of Education and to consider the most effective and cost-effective ways in which supports for children, their parents, teachers and schools can be provided. As well as salaries of the teachers additional service costs of almost €400,000 were incurred last year on the service for travel and subsistence, IT and other expenses. More than two-thirds of the children the VTHVI supports attend mainstream schools.
