Still no winning ticket in special-needs lottery

Teaching Matters/Breda O'Brien: Mary is no bother. She sits at the back of the class, and unlike most other students, she never chats to her neighbours. Her only crime is that often she is not paying full attention.

She is mortified when corrected, so her teacher gently tries to call her back rather than embarrass her. James, on the other hand, is a pain.

He is cheeky and scathing, and enjoys undermining his teachers and causing maximum disruption. His teacher often declares ominously in the staffroom that he will swing for James, but others swiftly remind him that he will have to join a queue. Alanna, on the other hand, is not there at all. Literally.

Alanna could not come to this school because she is a wheelchair user and the school cannot accommodate her.

Welcome to the world of special educational needs. Mary has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but the hyperactivity tag is misleading, because like a lot of girls with ADHD, Mary is gentle, dreamy and quiet.

James is very, very bright, but bored out of his mind, and most of his fertile intelligence is being used to devise today's innovative form of teacher torture. Giftedness is also a special educational need, but one very unlikely to receive any attention, when all resources are being concentrated on those who are falling behind in basic numeracy and literacy.

Alanna, oddly, may be doing best of all. She has a readily identifiable disability, and while she cannot attend this, her first-choice school, she is well catered for in another school. She has a special-needs assistant, though not the one she worked with and loved in primary school.

Mention special needs to most principals and watch them visibly wilt. Principals want to see every child reach his or her potential, and the lack of resources is deeply frustrating. Things have improved somewhat in recent times. The setting up of the National Council for Special Educational Needs (NCSE) this year was a worthwhile step, but it comes after years of neglect.

Take a familiar scenario. It becomes sadly obvious five weeks into the first term that Jack, who is a first year, is not coping. He is not from a middle-class background, where people know how to access services and can afford to pay for them. So the principal makes an application for an assessment, in the hope that Jack will receive an allocation of special resources. There is a backlog, so although there are now Special Education Needs Organisers (SENOs) who work for the new NCSE, it may be months before Jack receives his assessment. Meanwhile, the principal provides wads of paperwork, without knowing whether it will achieve anything.

If Jack has what is termed a "specific learning disability", he will be entitled to resource teaching which might be as little as one-and-a-half hours a week. Jack will only receive this if he has an IQ of 90+, and he is in the first or second percentile. In other words, in a group of 100 students, 99 or 98 of them would have to be better at English and Maths than Jack. If, however, a mere 97 are better than Jack, he gets nothing. Let's assume that Jack fits the bill. Even if all are agreed he needs help, it might be well into second year, or even third year, before that is put into place. Meanwhile, Jack falls further and further behind.

Ah, but heaven help Jack if he is in an over-quota school. If due to demographic changes the numbers attending a school drop, the school is deemed to be over-quota if the ratio of teacher to students is lower than 1:18. Ominously, the Department of Education and Science (DES) circular on special-needs allocation declares that all those schools deemed to be over-quota "should await the direction of the DES before making any teacher-staff adjustments." Loosely translated, that means you will get little or nothing.

Finding and retaining special-needs teachers is a nightmare. Firstly, you never know from year to year what amount of hours you will have for them. Secondly, the lack of permanency drives some excellent resource teachers back into subject teaching. If you are among the fortunate few in the voluntary secondary sector who have a learning support teacher on staff, another problem looms. How is that teacher supposed to help every special-needs student, children as diverse as Mary, James, Alanna and Jack, in his or her 22 teaching hours a week?

If principals and teachers are at their wits' end, imagine being the parent of one of these children. You know that there is now a legal requirement to meet your child's needs. Imagine your frustration if nothing appears to be being done for your child. Legal cases against schools are only a matter of time.

There are two very worthwhile conferences in the area of special needs coming up soon, coincidentally both on November 12th. One is being held by the JMB/AMCSS in Lynch Green Isle Hotel, Dublin 22 and is aimed primarily at principals and SEN teachers. For information tel: 01-2838255 or email finola@secretariat.ie

The other conference, hosted by HADD Family Support Group, concerns ADHD and is aimed at parents, teachers and childcare professionals. It is being held in Moran's Red Cow Hotel, Dublin 2. For further information, tel: 01-2898533 or email info@claraclark.ie .

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