Special needs education set for overhaul

THE Government is beginning a major overhaul of the way teachers and other resources are allocated for primary school children with disabilities.

The Department of Education last night set out a number of new policies on the issue of special educational needs. There are more than 10,000 such pupils with varying physical and learning disabilities in the primary sector.

The move has been welcomed by parents and teachers, particularly plans to allocate set staff numbers to all schools, rather than forcing children to wait until their specific needs have been assessed.

Since a number of successful legal actions against the State in the late 1990s for education of disabled children, thousands of primary pupils have been allocated resource and learning support teachers or special needs assistants. However, the level of applications being processed by Department of Education officials meant thousands of children were being left waiting at least six months for resources to be approved.

Now for the first time, the department is to compile a database of numbers of special needs pupils and allocated resources, beginning this month. All 3,300 primary schools must reply to a census giving an outline of their own situation.

More significantly, the results of this review will help inform a decision on annual allocations of special needs staff to every school, based on the predicted level of special educational needs within different size schools.

“Such a system would prevent the need for individual applications for resources in respect of individual pupils, other than in the most exceptional circumstances,” said the department circular, outlining the proposals.

The Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO), which has made repeated calls for a less bureaucratic application system, said many of its concerns were finally being addressed.

“We sought that each primary school be given a staffing quota of learning support teachers, resource teachers and special needs assistants based on the enrolment of the school in accordance with agreed criteria,” said INTO general secretary John Carr.

He welcomed the announcement as the start of a proper and long overdue planning process but warned that any review should not result in resources being taken away from children with special needs.

National Parents Council (Primary) chief executive Fionnuala Kilfeather said the forward planning envisaged by the proposed arrangements was a common sense approach.

“It is great that we will be consulted along with the other education partners on this. The applications have been too like a medical model, with children’s need having to be diagnosed before they were given any assistance,” she said.

The Department of Education also urged schools to use existing special needs staff to better effect.