Schools will not be able to appeal cuts for at least four months

HUNDREDS of schools will be told about cuts to special needs assistants (SNAs) on Friday, but they will not be able to appeal for at least four months.

The National Council for Special Education will write to schools tomorrow about their allocation for the next school year. But Education Minister Ruairi Quinn already announced last Friday that 475 posts were being held back from primary and second level schools to cater for emergency applications, children who arrive into schools during the school year, or pupils who will be newly-assessed with a disability or syndrome that qualifies them for the help of an SNA.

His department is already paying 10,802 SNAs but has said it must reduce this back to 10,575 by year’s end to remain within a staff ceiling under the EU/IMF bailout terms. The additional SNAs in place are mostly accounted for by the recognition of 13 new special schools catering for pupils with autism.

But hundreds more children are also expected to be eligible for the help of an SNA from the 10,000 pupils due into primary schools in September. This is likely to mean hundreds of children losing their SNA or having reduced access to help.

While appeals of allocations of an SNA — who can be shared among pupils in a school or in the same class if their care needs do not require full-time help — were previously open to parents and schools, the NCSE says this week’s allocations cannot be appealed until a revised system is devised. But this will not happen until at least half way through the first term.

“It is envisaged that a mechanism will be developed through which schools may seek to have the position in relation to the level of SNA resource revisited. However, given that there is now a finite cap on the level of such supports, the current model of appeal is not appropriate for use in the context of SNA allocation,” the NCSE says on its website.

“Therefore the new mechanism for use by schools and parents will be developed after the operation of the resource allocation process itself has been examined. This is scheduled to take place in September/October next in the context of the conclusion and the outcome of the 2011/12 allocations process,” it states.

The IMPACT union, which represents thousands of SNAs, said it had major concerns about the allocations process announced last Friday, particularly a restriction on pupils with behavioural problems starting junior infants, who will not get an SNA when they begin school unless there is evidence that their behaviour is extremely challenging or dangerous. Assistant general secretary Philip Mullen said there was also a lot of uncertainty about the levels of support for individual pupils.