Schools, pupils and teachers feel the pain as special-needs classes are cut back

Some 128 schools are set to lose special-needs classes for children with mild general learning disabilities. The cutback has generated unease and apprehension among parents and teachers in one Co Monaghan school

MARY KELLY teaches a class of children with special needs in Castleblayney Convent Junior National School in Monaghan. Each of the seven children in her class has an individual education plan because they have a range of learning, behavioural and medical difficulties. But Kelly’s responsibilities extend far beyond English and maths. Speech therapy, occupational therapy as well as teaching simple life skills that the rest of us take for granted all fall under her remit.

There are good days and bad days. “A fortnight ago I went into the staffroom after a tough day, completely drained,” Kelly explains. “I was thinking about how I really needed another assistant in the class when news came through that we would be losing at least one of our special needs classes altogether. I could not believe that this was even being considered.”

The Convent JNS has a long history of special-needs provision in Monaghan. The school has two special-needs classes – one with six children and one with seven, although that changes from year to year.

“The children in our classes range in age from four to 12,” explains principal Sheila Donnelly. “We don’t just have children with mild learning disabilities. We have children with Di George Syndrome, Foetal Alcohol Syndrome – a range of different problems and syndromes. We have five children who are classified as having a moderate learning disability as well.”

Now the Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe has announced that the school and 127 others are to lose a special-needs class. Any special-needs class with an enrolment of fewer than nine will be cut and the children expected to integrate into the mainstream system. The Minister has said that resource hours and special-needs assistants will be available for the children who reintegrate.

Donnelly is aghast. “Some of these children would not be entitled to help because their disability does not tick the requisite box on the application form,” she says. “Every child in our special classes has been recommended to be there because mainstream education was either deemed unsuitable or it has failed them.”

This cut will directly affect 534 children with special needs this year, but in reality if these children are integrated into mainstream classes, far more will be affected.

Parent Regina Treanor has first-hand experience of what can happen when a child with serious special needs ends up in a mainstream class that is unsuitable for them.

“My oldest chap had massive difficulties in mainstream education in another school. He has huge sensory problems and the noise in his classroom was just unbearable for him,” she recalls. “His behaviour was completely unmanageable and it was disrupting absolutely everyone in the class.”

The impact on the other children in the class led parents to complain bitterly to Treanor who was at her wit’s end. Having heard about the special-needs classes in the Convent JNS, she approached Donnelly and secured places for her oldest son and his younger brother, who had been educationally assessed and was exhibiting similar problems. Both are thriving, but Treanor is quietly adamant that to attempt to integrate them into a mainstream class would be hugely problematic for all concerned.

Donnelly agrees. “Decisions about children needing to be in a class that is outside of the mainstream are not taken lightly,” she says. “Health and educational professionals as well as the parents of these children have deemed a special class to be necessary. Now the Minister wants to overrule all of that expertise for the sake of €7 million. How can he possibly know better?”