Fury over Hanafin’s special needs claims

FORMER Minister for Children Mary Hanafin has infuriated parents, teachers and school managers by claiming that the rise in application for special needs assistants in classrooms may be a sign that the system may have gone “out of control.”

There have been 5,500 applications for special needs assistants in primary and secondary schools between February and August 21, twice the norm.

Teachers say they need the extra help to cope in the classroom and parents say applications have only risen because more and more are realising that if they don’t look for the help their children need now, they will be left behind as they would have been a generation ago.

“Do each of these children need an adult in class or has the system gone out of control,” the minister said yesterday, much to the ire of principals gathered for the Association of Principals in Vocational Schools and Community Colleges annual conference in Kilkenny.

The former teacher claimed one of the reasons behind an ongoing audit of services in schools was that some were holding on to the allocated assistant, even when the child left the school.

“There has been a startling number of applications for one year, given that since 1998, 1,531 learning support teachers have gone in, along with 2,300 resource teachers, 500 special class teachers and 1,200 teachers in special schools. That is just at primary level alone.

“Is there really a need for so many children to have an individual with them in the class and shouldn’t the target be to lower the pupil/teacher ratio and put the extra resources into schools?,” the Minister for State at the Department of the Taoiseach asked.

“Special needs assistants are a target response for children with special needs. I’m not sure they are the answer for the child who needs an extra bit of help with homework,” she added.

Special needs group, NAMHI, was outraged by the comments. General secretary, Deirdre Carroll, said if the minister was questioning the validity of the 5,500 requests, then she was questioning the professional opinion of the clinical psychologists who say the children need such help.

“People are not making excessive demands and requests. They are looking for some basic compromise so that their children can attend mainstream school. Our experience is that applications are only based on the needs on the ground,” she said.

She said that with the Education Bill and disability legislation coming on stream, the Department could look forward to far more applications in the future.

One mother, Caroline O’Dwyer, has been fighting for years for the education needs of her two children, six-year-old Shannon and four-year-old Paul. They have a language disability but cannot get into a local language unit in Kilkenny, without first completing a year at mainstream school.

They need a special needs assistant but have been refused one. A local school has agreed to take them in, thanks to the generosity of the teacher there.

“There has been a rise in applications because parents are copping on that without them pushing for the help their children need, nobody will look out for them,” she said.

“Nobody wants their child to require extra help or to stick out like a sore thumb because they have a classroom assistant. If the government claims to be throwing so much money at special needs already, why is none of it being thrown at my children,” the Kilkenny mother said.