Extra 1,500 teachers employed to help special needs pupils

An additional 1,500 primary school teachers have been employed over the past year to help cater for children with special needs, it was confirmed today.

Education Minister Mary Hanafin said the extra teachers were targeted at providing extra support for children with special needs, those from disadvantaged areas and children who need help with their English.

“These additional teachers have made an immeasurable difference to the lives of all these children and are also providing vital backup for classroom teachers in helping these children,” she told the annual Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) congress in Killarney, Co Kerry.

“If we had just put these extra teachers into classrooms instead of into these priority areas they would have done a lot to reduce class size in our schools. But then we wouldn’t have been able to put the resources that were needed into special education, disadvantage and language support.”

The Government was heavily criticised last week after a survey revealed thousands of youngsters with learning difficulties were awaiting psychiatric assessment.

A study of 177 schools found 5% of students have special needs, but only one third of schools employ staff trained to meet these demands.

Ms Hanafin admitted the Government’s record on the issue had been poor and insisted that the provision of extra supports for children with special needs was close to her heart.

“There is no doubt that the record of the state over decades in supporting children with special needs was very poor and that we have really only risen to this challenge in recent years,” she said.

“However, remarkable progress has been made and indeed there are now more than 5,000 teachers – or a fifth of the entire primary teaching force – working specifically with children with special needs and learning difficulties. And alongside them are 6,000 special needs assistants.”

Ms Hanafin said 3,400 extra teachers have been employed in schools since 2002 and 500 more teachers were being hired for next September to reduce class size.

Issues being debated by the country’s 60,000 school teachers at their annual trade union conferences include student misbehaviour, class sizes and the funding of education.

The minister told the teachers gathered that a strategy to cater for the needs of non-English speaking children was being developed.

Ms Hanafin said the number of staff employed in the Garda Central Vetting Unit was being doubled to allow vetting to be extended on a phased basis to all people who have unsupervised access to children in schools.

The conference heard a 30-strong team of language experts would be put in place in the autumn to work with teachers to improve their fluency in the Irish language and emphasise interesting ways of teaching it.

“I am completely opposed to proposals to abandon compulsory Irish for the Leaving Cert. What we must do is ensure that young people enjoy learning the language, not encourage them turn their back on it,” she said. “Reform, rather than rejection is the way to go.”