INTO conference: Special needs debate: There was dismay at delays in having children assessed for help, writes Kathryn Holmquist
In a private session on special needs yesterday, a teacher told of how an autistic 14-year-old who could not speak or engage with the world in any manner five years ago, is now participating in the Special Olympics.
Education in a classroom with a focus on learning, rather than health care, enabled the teenager to learn to speak, walk, feed himself and understand the routine of the classroom.
Now aged 19, the young man could have achieved so much more if he had not spent 10 years of his life, from age four to 14, in daycare, his teacher stated.
The young man's parents now regret that education was not a part of his experience from the beginning.
The INTO believe that the case is an example of how education and health services need to be coordinated so that children with severe and profound special needs can make the most of their potential.
Parents have a right to go to court to gain educational equality for their children with special needs, the INTO Congress heard yesterday.
Ms Ann McMahon, a resource teacher in Limerick, argued that the assessments of children with learning difficulties were taking as long as a year to get. Once they were assessed, children were having their entitlements to special needs assistants delayed by many months.
National educational psychologists were currently reviewing assessments by other national educational psychologists, which she interpreted as a delaying tactic. The shortage of psychologists means that only one in 100 children is assessed, stated Mr Peter McGrane of the Central Executive Committee. Yet many children experienced special educational needs at some stage.
The INTO Congress has demanded more psychologists in the National Educational Psychological Service in order to reduce waiting lists. In one school, seven pupils required psychological assessment but only one received it. Teachers anxious to take training courses to qualify as resource teachers were having to wait three years for training.
Michele Keane, Dublin North East, stated that in her own school, one combined class of third and fourth years had 32 children, four of whom had been assessed with special needs and one who had emotional difficulties. In another class, one young teacher was handling a combined class of infants and first class, where two children had serious special needs and six children were going to learning support.
The INTO wants to see class sizes "weighted" so that the more special needs children in a class, the lower the pupil-teacher ratio.
Ms Miriam Mulkerrin told the conference that speech and language services needed radical change. There was scarcely any liaison between therapists and schools, apart from written reports. She argued that speech and language therapists should be employed directly by schools, or groups of schools.
"The Department of Education and Science encourages early intervention, but what they really mean is better late than never," stated Ms Mulkerrin.
She accused "number crunchers" of using arbitrary test scores to grant some children resource teaching, while others who scored marginally better on a particular day were denied such teaching.
"Teacher observation and classroom-based assessment should also qualify for consideration in awarding resource hours to children," she argued.