June 2011

CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES HIT AGAIN BY EDUCATION CUTS

Inclusion Ireland strongly condemns the decision to cutback teaching supports for children with disabilities. The Department of Education and Skills yesterday (Wednesday 1st June) announced that from next September, schools will only be given 90% of the teaching hours they will need to meet the independently assessed needs of pupils with disabilities. This is another cutback in the area of education supports for children with disabilities, which over the last 3 years includes:

• October 2008 - halting full rollout of Education for Persons with Special Educational Needs Act 2004, which was to be fully implemented by 2010. This Act was a major part of the Disability Strategy and included ‘individual education plans’, where child’s education needs would be assessed and a plan reviewed every year;
• February 2009 – it was announced that 128 special classes were to be cut from mainstream schools, which were deemed to no longer qualify for the teaching posts allocated to them. 534 pupils were enrolled in these classes. Following appeals 10 of these classes were reinstated, but 118 were still cut;
• April 2010 - a review of special needs assistants (SNAs) was published that showed there were 353 fewer SNAs in the education system. However, this is ‘whole-time equivalents’ and does not accurately reflect the number of children involved, i.e. many SNAs work part-time and many children only have an SNA for a few hours per week, so one whole-time equivalent may support several children;

These cuts are compounded by increasing class sizes, which also put children with a disability at a disadvantage. Inclusion Ireland also continues to have major concerns with the lack of an independent appeals system in the area of special needs education. While the Government has changed in the midst of these cuts, this means little to those children with disabilities who need additional supports or to their parents who can see their children regressing.

ENDS