Learning the hard way
FOR children whose parents desire them to begin school before the age of four, options are limited.
For those who actually need to begin education before the age of four, options are bleak.
Historically, the Government does not recognise itself as having any role in formal teaching prior to junior infants. It has left the pre-school sector in the hands of private operators, paid for by parents that can afford early tuition.
In September, the OECD ranked Ireland second-last among the world’s 30 most developed countries for investment in this sector.
Such dereliction of duty by the State not only restricts access to early learning opportunities for all children, it also denies the most vulnerable a badly needed head start before mainstream school.
These are children with special language needs who, if they come from poor economic backgrounds, lose out on the chance to exploit the most intensive learning years of their lives.
For those who can afford it, there is the option of private therapy or expensive specialist pre-schools.
One of these is the pre-school network Early Language Intervention.
This is a specialist playgroup-based school system operating in four areas of Dublin and in Oranmore, outside Galway.
Children join the classes in two two-and-a-half-hour sessions for five days a week with a separate after- school programme.
It was established in 2001 by husband and wife Joel Nudi and Deirdre Muldoon when they spotted the need for pre-school intervention. The first school was in Stillorgan and the most recent one was set up in Co Galway.
Ms Muldoon said that although the children can benefit greatly, the cars parked outside their doors reflect each parent’s ability to pay for the service.
She compares this to her time working among the disadvantaged communities in Clondalkin after she returned from training in America.
She said many children from areas like west Dublin are missing out on opportunities because parents cannot find the money for appropriate pre-school.
“ELI is not the same as formal education — it is about getting the kids used to other people, used to understanding language and the meaning of language. It can be about sending the kids into Mary’s class and asking her what time it is and getting them to understand what that means or teaching them how to play.
“We did a lot of lobbying to try and get recognition because we are conscious of many parents who cannot afford or access the services because we have to charge for them.
“If we could get teachers’ salaries paid, we could reach so many more people. I cannot describe the frustration it has been,” she said.
They are not alone in recognising this need. For more than a decade, educationalists and researchers have been shouting for reform.
In recently-published research, Dr Philomena Donnelly, a lecturer in St Patrick’s Drumcondra, described this country’s relationship with pre-school as representing a “history of neglect”.
She said the constitutional reverence given to the rights of the family has seen successive governments wash their hands of involvement in the care of young children.
In her opinion, nobody has led the debate but it is up to the Department of Education to take charge.
“There is a need for the State to establish and operate a comprehensive system of education for children between the ages of three and five in Ireland.
“It has to be located in the Department of Education and Science, alongside other strands of the education system. Only then will Ireland be able to compete,” she said.
The Department of Education has a problem in this area. It is given a budget to provide primary education from the age of four and any decision to begin funding programmes at an earlier stage would stretch its resources, when it is already trying to improve the teacher-pupil ratio in mainstream schools.
Furthermore, it sees the provision of speech and language therapy, for whatever age, as falling at the doorstep of the HSE.
A statement from the department said it cannot be held responsible for shortcomings in this area and it is doing what it can to tackle the problem by helping school-age children to connect with specialist services.
“The provision of therapy services, including speech and language therapy, is a matter for the Health Services Executive and funding is provided to the HSE for such purposes.
“The National Council for Special Education (established in 2003), primarily provides for the planning and co-ordination of education and support services to children with special education needs.
“Through its network of local Special Educational Needs Organisers, it provides for the allocation of resource teachers and special needs assistants to schools to support children with special needs,” it said.
However, while the department is able to deflect responsibility, the HSE can reciprocate the action.
Especially for children who need to access speech and language therapy in an ongoing school setting, the HSE is able to dodge the bill by saying it will only look after treatment for medical and psychological cases.
These clinical cases come under its duty of care and its stretched budget is not called on to cover classroom settings.
A spokesman said education was not its remit. This includes situations where education is provided in classroom environments to pre-school children.
The HSE said its influence in the pre-school and creche sector is to regulate and ensure all services adhere to safety and child protection rules.
In this realm it has compiled an inspection report about the ELI school in Monkstown, as it does for more than 2,000 other creches annually.
This report found the Monkstown ELI to have breached the regulations in some areas, including having a cluttered play area and insufficient storage for toys.
This frustrated Mr Nudi, who said the nature of the behavioural education meant it had to have a range of very specific and age-appropriate toys for each pupil.
These are designed to encourage emotional and sensory development and the same toys cannot be given to children with different learning requirements.
He said it could provide more storage space but it is restricted to buildings it is able to afford and this means compromising in some areas to retain focus on the children’s needs.
He said by filling the void in the education system he has handed the authorities a rod to beat him with and he feels there is more emphasis put on regulations than there is on the children’s potential.
“The HSE says we are an educational facility when we ask for money but will treat us as a creche when it comes to the regulations. We are dealing with parents of children with special needs who are sending their children for early education, not to creche and it is only for a session a day.
“We have approached the Department of Education numerous times looking for them to fund the services but we have got nowhere.
“The parents are looking at us because they know if they can avail of the services their children might not have to go into special needs school,” he said.
There is some funding available to creches and pre-schools for capital works. Home-tuition grants can be used by parents to offset the cost of ELI.
Even this source of funding is fractured. To qualify for home tuition grants a child has to be assessed and rated on the autism spectrum.
This will not cover the other 50% of children who attend ELI pre-schools and have be diagnosed with Down Syndrome, deafness or language delay.
Mr Nudi said it means very few children, who are assessed and can benefit from the financial support of parents, will get the help they need.
“We are teaching the children every day, it goes way beyond childcare. Each child gets individual educational plans so they can develop to their own goals.
“The department says we should go to the HSE and really intervention should start at four years of age but that way you miss two or three years of educational opportunity when the child can make up huge ground,” he said.
ELI started working with three children together to allow them access it at a reduced rate. The cost could not be compared with standard creche facilities but it was cheaper than individual sessions of therapy.
Ms Muldoon said it proved to be doubly beneficial as it gave thechildren access to their peers and they could thrive off each other.
If this model was to be replicated the need for a high teacher-pupil ratio and associate intervention tools means this method of education would be expensive for the Department of Education to begin paying for.
However, the economic argument still points in favour of early intervention rather than trying to deal with the consequences of these disorders in later life.
In 2005 the National Economic and Social Forum said the neglect of the pre-school sector made poor financial sense.
It said by providing appropriate pre-school for every child would give a return of €7.08 for every €1.25 spent.
Mr Nudi said the benefits are even more extreme in cases of learning difficulties where individual education programmes at an early age can allow children to progress to mainstream school without the need for special resource teachers.
He said parents realise this and will suffer the expense if it brings out the best in their children.
This year ELI upped its prices. Parents are paying upwards of €595 a month to get group sessions and that goes up if they are part of other programmes especially for those children who require one-to-one tuition.
“As we have grown we have tried to serve as many children as we could.
“We started to get to parents who could not afford it but this year we have had to raise our prices drastically to keep afloat. Both myself and Deirdre pumped our SSIAs into this but we could not keep it going.
“We did this in the hope the Department of Education would start to fund some of the salaries, but that didn’t come and we could not keep going. The staff had to be paid,” he said.
ELI uses specially-trained therapists on a ratio of three or four teachers to every 11 pupils. Ms Muldoon said this has had significant results.
“The earlier you are able to get them learning, the earlier they are able to start interacting.
“We have had great feedback from parents. Of course you will get parents who will not be happy, but for the most of the children we have been told if they had not had intervention they would not have been able to go into mainstream school.
“That is why it is important they get the language education earlier on and not be starting when they are already in school,” she said.
Despite the success, and calls for a widening of the educational net, the children in this area fall between two stools.
In her work, Dr Donnelly said it all goes back to the State’s fear of interfering with the constitutionally enshrined status given to the family.
Unless this is eroded, she said, Government agencies will continue to turn the other way rather than accept jurisdiction and begin meeting the needs of pre-school children.
Mr Nudi and his wife share the belief this will not happen without a radical change of philosophy in how education is regarded in this country.
“We have met with the Department of Education but the outcome of that was it fell under the Department of Health and Children and the HSE said the opposite,” Ms Muldoon added.
“The department is dead against the likes of applied behavioural teaching and, until we get at least a change of minister, I cannot see us being able to find any chink in the armour.”
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