Irish Teacher: If a school makes an error in a child's assessment, will they be legally accountable?

Like Victor Frankenstein in the aftermath of his monster’s birth, the State is turning its back on schools

This week, schools were advised that it is now their job to assess a child’s needs.

I’m reading Frankenstein with my fifth years.

Mary Shelley’s masterpiece is both a part of the romantic tradition, and deeply critical of it. At 19, she had the intellectual elasticity and emotional intelligence to recognise the dangers of a heroic spirit obsessed with personal achievement, a spirit willing to degrade personal relationships and abandon care in order to succeed.

It’s a good thing society has moved on, right? Except of course, it hasn’t. Our continued adoration of so-called ‘heroic male genius’ persists. Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerburg. Jeff Bezos. The list goes on. Even our own soon-to-be Taoiseach defines himself as an ‘eco-capitalist’, as if there isn’t a giant male ego-shaped hole burning up our world already.

Like Mary Shelley, I’m tired of this version of genius; I’m also tired of how our system enables it. Take my subject: the English course is wonderful, every lesson bursting with collaborative discussions and activities. In the end however, students are asked to write nothing but essays, in silence. Alone. The message is clear: the work you do alone in silence, solely for your own gain, is the work that counts. That individual hustle for points is what identifies a successful student here.

I spoke with a friend who teaches in the Scottish system. For their Highers, the Leaving Cert equivalent, students write only one extended critical essay in the exam. Students also prepare 30% of their mark in class before the exam. She explained how enriching it is to guide a student towards their topic, particularly for tasks like the personal essay. She relishes the collaboration, the human side of her course. How it’s actively rewarded. I envy her that.

But something else strikes me reading Frankenstein. The book highlights the sanctity of parenting, of caring for children, the vulnerable. There is a layering of it throughout the story. His father rescues his mother. His mother rescues his beloved sister. Shelley examines what it means to bring a child into the world. Or at least what it should mean. Not just for the parent, but for society. Shelley is damning of Victor Frankenstein because he fails to care for his ‘child’, produced through his extended ‘labour’ and ‘agony.’

Far more chilling than how we assess our children in Ireland, is how we care for them — or fail to.

This week, schools were advised that it is now their job to assess a child’s needs. Schools can no longer rely on psychologists to perform assessments of needs. Teachers and principals, SEN coordinators, without any compulsory medical training, will decide what supports should be put in place.

Beyond the family, every child deserves a safety net. In Ireland, the net keeps shifting, and the holes are getting bigger and bigger. Teachers lack the expertise and indeed the time to carry out these assessments. Quietly, ever so quietly, the state is removing its responsibility, reducing expertise, weakening the net. Like Victor Frankenstein in the aftermath of his monster’s birth, it is turning its back.

This isn’t only happening to teachers. Our gardaí are suffering from increased responsibilities, tackling homelessness and mental health, plugging the gaps and holes left by a state that fails to recognise the fundamentals of care.

Principal Trina Golden in an open email to the Department makes it clear that to accept this recent change in procedure would be, “to accept their assertion that the information in a school support plan fulfils the legal requirement described in the High Court of a child’s right to an Assessment of Need”.

The National Principals’ Council is equally concerned about “the expectation from the National Council of Special Education for school leaders and teachers to sort out their legislative responsibilities without being qualified to do so”.

They worry that these documents will have legal ramifications, leaving schools “knee deep in litigation”.

Children have a legal right to an assessment of need under the Disability Act. If a school makes an error in their assessment, will they be legally accountable?

Schools are already overloaded so this puts us in serious peril. Or rather, it puts our children in serious peril. Like Victor Frankenstein, the state is abandoning its duty of care, pushing it away, placing it elsewhere. Recruitment and retention are at a concerning low among frontline workers. We don’t have enough teachers. We don’t have enough gardaí. Who will be left to care when those in caring professions drop out, burn out, say, ‘no more, not us, not again’? What will happen once frontline workers say, ‘it’s all too much’. We don’t have time. We don’t have the expertise’? I honestly don’t know.