Special school must scrap classes as assistants cut

EDUCATION Minister Batt O’Keeffe’s plans to cut hundreds of special needs assistant places could force a vital special needs school to axe a series of courses on the curriculum, its principal has claimed.

Brendan Hennigan, principal of St Joseph’s school in Tallaght, Dublin, said it may be unable to continue a number of courses due to the scale of cuts to be imposed.

While 17 special needs assistants are currently in place at the 90-pupil facility, over the coming months the Department of Education is set to drastically reduce the funding available for these places.

From today, the board of management has been ordered to put forward four names of SNAs who are to tender their resignation at the facility, while a further four are due to be cut by mid-April.

The department has insisted the cuts, which are part of an ongoing review of 10,500 SNA places in this country, are a necessary step towards ensuring the education sector’s budget is spent appropriately.

However, calling for a last-minute reprieve on the issue, Mr Hennigan said the situation will force some pupils to leave full-time education and ensure a complete curriculum is unable to be taught effectively at the facility.

“This move is completely against our will but unfortunately we are being pushed into making this decision,” the St Joseph’s principal said.

“The children in the school are aged between six and 18. The school is for people with mild to moderate development issues, which means people with an IQ of 45 to 70, and in addition to that a lot of our pupils would have social or addiction issues.

“There is an absolute need for the number of SNAs we have, we can’t run the school properly without them.

“If we do have to cut the numbers then that means the pupils are not getting the support they need, that the SNAs will be completely over-stretched, and ultimately that we won’t be able to risk having courses that could pose a physical risk to pupils or staff,” he said.

Over the past month Mr Hennigan said representatives from St Joseph’s have sent a number of letters to the Department of Education asking for a “stay of execution” for the school.

In addition, they have asked the department to sanction fresh assessments of the pupils due to be affected by the staff changes.

However, while local TDs Charlie O’Connor, Fianna Fáil, and Pat Rabbitte, Labour, have also attempted to raise the matter, to date no response has been provided.

The SNA cuts are part of a nationwide review of 4,000 schools across Ireland which have taken place in an attempt to reduce education sector costs.

It is believed that almost 1,200 of the 10,500 SNA posts in existence when the review took place last summer could be cut under the plan.

The Department of Education and Mr O’Keeffe have repeatedly defended the SNA reduction policy, with the minister saying in this newspaper last month that “there is absolutely no question of SNA posts being removed from schools where they are needed and meet the scheme’s criteria”.