Teaching Matters/Breda O'Brien: Since the advent of the Education of Persons with Special Educational Needs Act, 2004, (EPSEN) parents naturally expect that adequate resources and supports now exist to facilitate their child or children with special needs to attend a mainstream school.

The reality is far bleaker. There is no lack of goodwill, but many schools do not even have a lift for wheelchairs.

The National Council for Special Education (NCSE) is to report shortly to the Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, regarding the level of resources that will be needed to implement the legislation. Some would argue that unless legislation were in place, even less would happen, but at the same time, it is bizarre to first legislate and then assess what is needed.

The last time I wrote about special educational needs, I received a thoughtful and well-argued letter from a reader who rightly chided me for ignoring the role of special schools. Increasingly, mainstreaming is being presented as the only choice, which although it works well for many children, is not the ideal solution for all. This reader had been a teacher and principal in a special school, and, as he pointed out, there should be a continuum of care of which special schools are a part, in order to allow parents real choice as to where to send their children.

I was intrigued, therefore, to hear recently of a Co Carlow secondary school, where a pupil with Down's syndrome spends three-and-a-half days a week. The student then attends a special school for the other one-and-a-half days. It seems to be an innovative answer worked out between two creative principals.

Education for people with special educational needs covers such a wide area, and yet still leaves a sizeable portion of people in desperate need of help outside its ambit.

Many parents are shocked to discover that their child is not covered by EPSEN. For example, take specific learning disability, which is defined as when a child of average intelligence or higher has a degree of learning disability specific to basic skills in reading, writing or mathematics which places them at or below the seconnd percentile. In other words, 98 out of 100 children would be better than these children are at reading, writing or mathematics. However, if only 95 children out of 100 are better than your child, she or he does not come under the remit of EPSEN, but is supposed to be covered by learning support. This is becoming less and less realistic, as learning support teachers may now already have classes of 15 or 20 children with very different needs - everything from physical to behavioural difficulties - for whom it is impossible to cater adequately.

Getting a child assessed is not easy, either, given that the National Educational Psychological Services (NEPS) is still nowhere near full operation. It is unfair that parents who can afford to commission private assessments are in a stronger position than parents who cannot.

Should a child be proven to have special educational needs, the legislation demands that the principal "cause an individual education plan (IEP) to be prepared within one month". Now, IEPs are not new, but the degree of what is required is new. Schools estimate that the preparation for the initial meeting for an IEP takes between 16 to 20 hours, by the time that all the interested parties have been consulted. The interested parties might include the child, the parents or guardians, subject teachers, learning support and resource teachers, guidance counsellor, tutor, year head, the special educational needs organiser (SENO) from the National Council for Special Education (NCSE), the child's primary teachers, the NEPS psychologist, and any other specialists like occupational or speech therapists.

The IEP must set out where the child is now, where she should be, and how she will get there. Again, this is terrific, but the time needed for regular review must also come from somewhere. Suppose, at a very conservative estimate, a twice-yearly review took 20 hours of additional time, you could be looking at 40 hours minimum per student. One school I know with 900 pupils has 70 with SEN, and that does not count those with learning difficulties, emotional and behavioural problems, and international students without English, none of whom fall within the remit of EPSEN.

Some schools are also dealing with students with serious medical conditions, without any school nurses. A nurse in a hospital is not expected to teach ill young people, but it looks as if some teachers are expected to nurse.

In order to begin to implement EPSEN, at the very least a new post of SEN co-ordinator should be created outside the schedule of regular posts, with teaching hours adjusted according to the amount of pupils with SEN. In the school with 70 such pupils, it is very difficult to see how the SEN co-ordinator could do any teaching at all, given that some 2,800 hours would be required just to draw up and monitor IEPs.

Schools are terrified of litigation, from parents frustrated by the lack of adequate resources, but also from so-called "mainstream" students who could protest that their educational needs are being compromised by the amount of resources and time that need to be dedicated to SEN pupils. Frankly, it is a mess, and a heartbreaking mess both for parents and schools, who all want what is best for the child.

Breda O'Brien is a teacher at Dominican Convent, Muckross Park, Dublin