Special needs assistants fall victim to spending cuts obsession
Mr Kennedy needs correcting in one respect, however. The teaching unions did not connive at O’Keeffe’s cynicism to preserve teachers’ monopoly of educational input in the classroom.
In fact, the TUI, in a submission on SNAs to the Department of Education and Science in November 2008, expressly endorsed educational support rather than a narrow “care” role for the SNA. In a submission in January 2009, INTO also envisaged an educational support role. Enlightened teachers have learned what SNAs can contribute to the classroom experience.
Mr Kennedy is undoubtedly right, however, to attribute O’Keeffe’s double-speak on special needs provision in mainstream schools to government cost-cutting. It also appears that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing in the department. Remarkably, the department endorses training programmes for SNAs that inculcate the provision of educational support rather than simply a care role. Why train SNAs for a role that you then seek to deny them in the classroom?
Experience shows that well-qualified SNAs who have undergone such training can enhance greatly the education as well as the care of children who have special needs. Moreover, the educational experience of the classroom as a whole improves when disruption caused by frustrated children with special needs is minimised. There is no doubt that the properly qualified SNA can and should play a role akin to what in Britain is known as a classroom assistant. While in the education portfolio, however, Batt O’Keeffe seemed determined to sacrifice such an enlightened and progressive approach, like so much else, to the Government’s ideological obsession with cuts in spending as the only route to rectifying the public finances.
Dr Colmán Etchingham
Ballinagilky
Hacketstown
Co Carlow
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