Students’ needs have not gone away, but their support has, says one special needs assistant

LOUISE* is one of hundreds of special needs assistants (SNAs) who will no longer be working with students with care needs in schools after classes ended yesterday.

She is one of nine SNAs working with more than a dozen of around 500 students at a Leinster second-level school. But she and two colleagues are being made redundant arising from a review of SNAs carried out by a Special Educational Needs Officer (SENO) last May.

They were told last summer that their jobs were going, meaning just six SNAs would have to be spread among all the students. But next Monday’s date for cuts to begin was set by the Department of Education on the basis that the review of all 4,000 primary and second level schools by SENOs from the National Council for Special Education would end before Christmas.