Comments on education supports by an Independent Senator have been strongly criticised by autism rights campaigners as “deeply disappointing” and “insulting”.
Speaking at a meeting of the Oireachtas education committee, which was hearing about the provision of special education, Senator Joe Conway said that there “must be something fundamentally wrong with schools” when there is “so much deferment” by children with additional support needs to special needs assistants (SNA).
He said that during his time as a teaching principal in a rural school, he encouraged teachers, parents and pupils to “build a sense of independence in the children”.
He said that “lots of children will present in their classroom as being needy or attention seeking” while teachers were overworked. “It can be very, very fractious,” he added.
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The more independence that was fostered for children, the less deference “there will be for supports”, he said. “We can tend to produce in classrooms a situation where there is an untoward gravitation towards support and it may not always be necessary”.
He was challenged on his remarks by Emily McPhilips-Sheridan, an autism campaigner who was appearing before the committee, who told him: “That’s not right, the children have needs, it’s not that they’re attention seeking.”
Adam Harris, chief executive of autism advocacy group AsIAm, said that difficulties were resolved by changing the environment, not the child.
“There’s an expectation that we should conform to environments that do treat us as misbehaving children, as opposed to meeting our needs and centring our rights,” he told the committee.
Speaking on Thursday afternoon, Harris – who was also attending as a witness to the committee – said the comments were “deeply disappointing”, labelling them as “throwaway remarks” which could “feed into a growing tide of misinformation on autism and disability”.
“True inclusion requires adaptation and investment,” he said. “It is neither attention seeking nor needy to expect both.” Harris said the comments were “deeply insulting and out of step with what is the lived experience of autistic children and families”.
Harris argued that all Oireachtas members should be aware of the significant barriers faced by autistic children and their families through constituent representations.
In response to Harris’s comments, Conway said that he valued the work of Oireachtas committees and that the work on Thursday was interesting and enlightening.
“In my contribution this morning, I was giving my perspective as a teaching principal in a relatively small rural school,” he said, adding that there were no SNA supports at the time.
“But, as with the classes of today, there were just as many needs there ... it is just that we had to deal with them, playing as best we could the hand of cards we were dealt. Fundamental to this was working assiduously to foster a culture of independence in pupils and buttressing their self-esteem.
“I know that those are among the aims of all teachers and SNAs today also. I was simply anxious to record that the school ethos and culture has a definite role to play in providing additional support – some clearly exposed and others more nuanced and subtle. I ndeireadh na dála, we all want to answer the very real needs that all children have, and support those who merit extra help in their progress through school.”
Pointing to his experience in the primary education sector, he said he had experienced “many iterations of our curricula”.
He said education was ever-changing and informed by research, practitioners, parents and children. “And as is the case of most disciplines, there is no conclusive bottom line or final answer.”
Social Democrats education spokeswoman Jen Cummins said that following the contribution, “the witnesses were visibly upset and shocked and the atmosphere was very tense. Language matters. This country has a long way to go to ensure that our education system is child centred, needs based and truly inclusive.”
