Special needs pupils wait for help

CHILDREN with learning difficulties are forced to wait more than a year for extra help when they move to second-level education, the ASTI annual convention heard yesterday.

A report presented to delegates showed one in 10 second-level students have some form of special educational need, ranging from mild learning difficulties to serious behavioural disorders.

Seán Hurley, a member of ASTI’s standing committee, said their survey found most schools have students who are not even getting the assessment they need to apply for extra resources.

“They require all this extra work in primary school but once they reach second level it takes another year to decide what needs to be done before that help is reinstated. That is often the critical time for students with a need for continuity,” he said.

There are 435 special needs assistants helping students with physical or behavioural difficulties in secondary school classrooms, he said. At primary level, there are more than 5,000 SNAs working with primary pupils.

Mr Hurley said teachers have to deal with special needs students without any extra support and, very often, no individual tuition being available.

He called on the department to provide more assessments and resource teachers and to allow teachers more time to plan and deal with such students.

Michael Kilbride said he had five students assessed and found they need 15 hours of resource teaching between them every week. But the department only approved five hours of such tuition for the full group, the north Dublin delegate said. Ruth Coppinger from the union’s Dublin South 2 branch, said social deprivation leads to learning difficulties and people would be astonished at the low level of literacy in schools in those areas.