Children at special schools miss twice as many days

CHILDREN attending special schools are missing twice as much time at school as other pupils – but staff feel greater medical support and links to home could help address the imbalance.

An analysis of attendance at the country’s 4,000 primary and second-level schools shows that 11% – or one-in-nine – of all school days in 100 special schools was lost through absences in the 2007/2008 school year. The absence rate compares to just 5.7% of days lost at 2,435 mainstream primary schools whose attendances were also analysed for the National Educational Welfare Board (NEWB).

While a higher absenteeism rate may be expected because of the high numbers of pupils in special schools who have complex medical needs, the Irish Association of Teachers in Special Education (IATSE) feels other issues may also be at play.

“The nursing support that may be required to allow some children attend special schools isn’t always available or sufficient,” said IATSE executive member Lisa White.

She said many special schools have pupils who need to take regular medicines or have to be fed through a tube directly into the stomach.

“But teachers or special needs assistants are not trained and it is questionable if a school is indemnified,” she said.

The same report by David Millar of the Educational Research Centre at St Patrick’s College in Dublin suggests that up to one-in-20 – almost 18,000 – of the country’s 335,000 second-level students was suspended in the same school year. The figure is almost equivalent to one student in every class, although the figure is for suspensions and may not take account of some students being suspended more than once.

The rate of suspensions has increased slightly in the four years for which data was available, with 664 out of 731 second-level schools providing information. At primary level, just 0.2% of pupils were suspended, in 2007/’08, and only 151 pupils out 766,000 at 3,781 schools were expelled.

Youth Work Ireland said young people need to be given more involvement in setting and monitoring school behaviour policies.

“The school cannot continue to be a top-down dictatorship if it is to serve the needs of a modern society and economy,” said central services director Michael McLoughlin.

Fine Gael education spokesman Brian Hayes said the true depth of school absenteeism is unknown as the figures on this issue in the same report are also two years old. They show that 57,000 children missed school every day.

“Pupils who are chronically absent are not dealt with. Early intervention is more effective than action when poor school attendance patterns have been established but this is not happening,” he said.