Sleep-out planned over lack of special school places

Parents, activists, and special needs assistants protested outside the Department of Education last August over the lack the places.

The backlog of children waiting for critical disability assessments is further exacerbating a severe special education school place shortage and forcing children into inappropriate educational settings.

This warning comes as more than 50 parents of children who do not have a school place for their child for this September are expected on Friday to stage a 24-hour sleep-out at the Department of Education.

It is part of a move to highlight how many families have already been told there is no school place for their child for September 2025.

Many of the families — who are located across the country, but particularly in Dublin, Cork, and Waterford — received rejection letters from dozens of schools.

Last September, as the current school year got underway, the parents and guardians of more than 160 autistic children were told in the High Court that the State has no special needs educational facilities for them.

Inappropriate settings

Childcare law specialist solicitor Niamh Maher of Healy Law, who represented a number of the affected families at the High Court last year, said she believes the problem will be worse this year.

She is again working with families around the country who do not have a school place for their child or who have been placed in an inappropriate special educational setting.

“I’m representing one child who is eight and who has never been in to a primary school, and this is the parents’ third year applying,” Ms Healy said.

“The Government was aware of this and didn’t put the appropriate resources in time in place.”

This week, the Dáil heard that more than 14,200 children are overdue an assessment of need that, among other functions, advises parents on the appropriate school placement for their child. 

Delays with the assessment of need process means that more parents have accepted mainstream or autism class placements for their child, when another school setting may have been more appropriate, Ms Healy said.

“Many parents find themselves in a scenario where they have to send their child to the inappropriate school setting, because they don’t have the appropriate report to apply to an ASD [Autism Spectrum Disorder] class or a special school placement.

It’s a cyclical problem. Parents are being forgotten at every end, and the children are being forgotten at every end

“Either it is services or access to services, getting an assessment in compliance with the Disability Act, and then getting the school settings. What you find is that a child who is in an inappropriate school setting ... it can result in school refusal, it can result in the onset of depression, or expulsions.

“It is so, so bad for a child to be put into a school setting that is not appropriate. It just leads to a serious amount of regression for children.”

The sleep-out by parents at the Department of Education is expected to continue for 24 hours, with parents remaining at the department’s premises on Marlborough St, Dublin.