No increase in special education support despite pleas for greater resources
Schools' representative bodies believe there is a need for increased resources this year, to ensure children with additional needs who attend developing schools receive the support they need.
Primary school management bodies have expressed serious concern about the unchanged allocation of special education teaching supports when “pupils need more supports this year, not less".
Educate Together, An Foras Pátrúnachta, the National Association of Boards of Management in Special Education (NABMSE), and the Muslim Primary Education Board, supported by the Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN), have sought a meeting with officials in the Department of Education.
This follows the publication of the Department of Education’s staffing schedule for primary schools and information provided to schools regarding their special education teacher (SET) allocation for next September.
The department intends to maintain the existing SET allocations for all schools for the coming school year, and will not now conduct a re-profiling exercise in 2021.
However, the representative bodies believe there is a need for increased resources this year, to ensure children with additional needs who attend developing schools receive the support they need.
“Our school prides itself on being inclusive but we are currently unable to support the needs of our pupils as we are chronically understaffed,” said Alan Sheehan, principal of Rochestown Educate Together National School.
A similarly-sized school across the road from his school in Cork has seven special education teachers.
“We have four. We are effectively half-staffed in the area of special education solely due to the fact that we are a rapidly developing new school. This limited SET staffing ultimately negatively impacts our ability to support all children in our school. This cannot continue any longer.”
Joint statement from @EducateTogether, @AFPatrunachta, @NABMSE, @IPPN_Education & the Muslim Primary Education Board:
— Educate Together (@EducateTogether) March 29, 2021
Primary school representative bodies raise concerns regarding support allocations for children with additional needshttps://t.co/DsWxZq98Qm
Emer Nowlan, the chief executive of Educate Together, said this was an issue for developing schools across the country.
Under the ‘front-loaded’ allocation model introduced in 2017, schools are given an allocation of SETs based on a school profiling exercise.
This profiling is done every two years, with schools’ allocations updated based on their previous year’s enrolment numbers and other information.
According to Educate Together, this model disadvantages developing schools.
