Batt O’Keeffe: expecting report by end of year

CONCERNS have been expressed about the absence of an appeal system for parents or schools when children have the services of a special needs assistant (SNA) withdrawn or reduced.

These staff help care for children with special needs at schools, based on assessments by the National Council for Special Education (NCSE), and their numbers have risen from 300 in 1997 to almost 10,000 last year.

Philip Mullen, assistant general secretary of the IMPACT union, which represents 3,000 SNAs, said he has heard from dozens of principals in recent months who were alarmed by decisions to withdraw SNA allocations, or reduce the hours of care from an SNA for individual children in recent months, particularly in the south, west and north-west of the country.