Resource teaching cuts must be reversed

The Government must treat special needs pupils with the dignity that they deserve, says Sheila Nunan

PICTURE this. Ireland’s population is ageing and there are more and more citizens of pensionable age. The social protection minister has announced that in order to “manage the situation”, she will spread the same amount of pension money among the increased numbers of pensioners. As a result, each pensioner will get 75% of what pensioners got two years ago.

But it’s not a 25% cutback you understand. How could anyone call it that when the amount of money is exactly the same as last year? And furthermore, the minister wants credit for maintaining the amount of money available for pensions in these difficult times. It is not an easy job you know, to ringfence money for pensions when billions have to be found for banks and tax cuts for the wealthy to keep the coalition partners happy.

A quango attached to the department has also issued a press release to tell pensioners to continue to maximise their use of additional money through careful planning.

Perhaps pensioners could visit one another’s houses and huddle around the one fire on cold evenings? Maybe our older citizens might share the one television? Why wouldn’t they all watch the same programme at the same time?

Of course this ridiculous scenario is entirely fictional. No government would treat its senior citizens with such disdain. No government would even try it, because pensioners would take to the streets in protest. But even if a government were to try it, the “hiss factor” would force a hasty retreat. But replace “pensioner” with “special needs child”, and you’ll get some idea of the stunt the Department of Education and the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) tried to pull yesterday.

There are more children with special needs in primary schools because of an increased birth rate over the past few years. We have had plenty of notice that school enrolments are likely to rise. There has also been better assessment and diagnosis of special needs.

You would expect a government committed to supporting mainstream education as stated in their Programme for Government to find the extra funding for the additional teachers.

But yesterday, the NCSE announced that the same number of teaching hours would be divided up among this increased number of special needs children.

But we won’t present it as a cutback. It’s not a real cut. How could it be when the number of teachers remains the same as last year? The NCSE press release urged schools to continue to maximise their use of additional teaching hours through careful planning, team teaching and/or the withdrawal of students to work in small groups in order to minimise the impact of this adjustment on individual students.

Principals and teachers all around the country could be heard asking “what additional teaching hours?”

But puzzlement quickly turned to anger as the smokescreen rolled away and schools saw the real impact of this slight of hand.

Because despite the Government’s equivalent of a three-card trick, the reality is that a large school with special needs pupils could lose one or more of their special needs teachers while keeping the same number of pupils. The teaching time for the children in that school will be cut by a quarter and the caseloads of the remaining three teachers will increase dramatically. That’s a real cut.

A child on the autistic spectrum who has an entitlement to five hours support teaching per week will see their individual teaching cut to 3.75 hours teaching per week. That’s a real cut.

Where they can, teachers are already teaching these children in small groups, but that won’t work for most special needs pupils. That’s why they were given one-to-one teaching in the first place.

Schools cannot do inclusion on the cheap. The spin from the NCSE can also be seen when it comes to explaining cuts in care support from special needs assistants. The non-expert could be forgiven for equating “access to an SNA” with having an SNA. The two are not the same. An SNA cannot be in the two or three places at the one time.

The Government must reverse this misguided policy decision and treat special needs children with the same dignity that they would older citizens. This may mean not only putting on hold planned tax cuts for the wealthy, but even asking those with means to pay a little more.

Perhaps expenditure on a quango might be diverted to fund frontline services for children.

Ireland has made huge progress in special education in recent years. Children with special needs are taught in their local schools alongside with their friends. The social return on this far exceeds the financial investment.

It is up to every citizen to let government TDs know they cannot turn back this tide of progress.

* Sheila Nunan is general secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation