Quinn’s U-turn - Sigh of relief, but more cuts to come

No one should be fooled by Education Minister Ruairi Quinn’s U-turn on his own highly unpopular and utterly inappropriate proposal to cut resource teaching hours for children with special needs by a further 12%.

Welcome though it may be, all the signs are that the minister has made this move for political rather than educational reasons. The reality is that since the Irish Examiner exclusively reported the planned cuts, Labour backbenchers have been getting it in the neck from irate parents.

Rubbing salt into the wound, Labour’s chairman, Galway East TD Colm Keaveney, currently out of favour with the leadership, accused the minister in our front-page story yesterday of betraying the party’s long held values.

Clearly, credit for forcing the ministerial backtrack goes to the parents of children with special needs who planned to voice their anger at multiple protest demonstrations across the country today. Meetings were set for Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Ennis, Galway, Boyle, Letterkenny, Carrick-on-Shannon, and the constituency office of Taoiseach Enda Kenny in Castlebar.

With Labour’s fortunes dwindling in the opinion polls over its unquestioning support for harsh government austerity policies, its deputies are now feeling the cold winds of impending change. Nervous about their Dáil seats, the last thing they want is to draw the ire of angry voters. Wrong-footed by Fianna Fáil, Labour and Fine Gael TDs were caught in the embarrassing position of backing the unpopular cuts in tonight’s Dáil vote on a government motion. Hence the minister’s reversal, his second this year following a U-turn on cuts to the Deis school equality programme.

Teachers, schoolchildren, parents and advocacy groups will breathe a sigh of relief at the sudden climb-down in the face of a groundswell of public anger. Yet many fear more cuts are coming down the line in the next school year when Mr Quinn receives a report on the allocation of resource teaching hours currently under review.

While it is critical to examine how special needs posts are allocated to mainstream schools, the current review should not be used as a convenient excuse for making more cuts in the wake of those already enforced on children with disabilities. The retention of one-to-one resource teaching at this year’s level is certainly welcome. However, it should not be forgotten that from being whittled down over the past two years the current level is only 85% of what it was in 2011.

Though special needs demand continues to rise at an alarming rate, the service is being spread ever more thinly. Worried parents fear this will have negative repercussions for children needing extra care. Inevitably, it will also impact on the teaching of other pupils in the class, something the review committee should consider. Unfortunately, while budgetary and staffing limits remain in place this depressing scenario will not go away. It is glaringly obvious that reducing educational supports for those in need will damage their prospects in life. No amount of regret on the minister’s part can assuage the anguish caused to parents by his proposal to cut services; an outrageous decision now thankfully reversed.

Ironically, Mr Quinn has instead promised an extra 500 posts for special needs this September. That’s what he should have pulled from the hat last week — not cuts to hit vulnerable children with special needs.