Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I concur with what Ms Griffin said in regard to National Educational Psychological Service and there being a cap on individual schools. I know from experience that there are huge difficulties for teaching staff in having to decide which students will be assessed. In the particular school I have in mind, there was a class with five students all requiring an assessment and all in receipt of some level of resource hours. Some were simply being taken out of the class and given whatever additional hours they could be given even though those hours were not necessarily allocated to the individual student. One student was assessed and diagnosed as having severe dyslexia and dysgraphia and the recommendation in the NEPS report was that the child have an occupational therapy assessment in light of the issues identified with fine motor skills. The parents discovered, however, that there was an 18-month waiting list for that assessment. They had the NEPS assessment confirming the child's diagnosis but they were faced with a delay of 18 months before obtaining an additional diagnosis of what they suspected was an underlying condition. That created huge difficulties for the school because although management knew what needed to be done for this particular child, it could not secure the resources to do it. Will the new allocation model be able to address those types of scenarios?

In this child's case serious consideration was given to whether he should move from mainstream to special school because the resources were there to deal with dyslexia. The parent wanted to keep him in mainstream school.

It is an awful predicament for any school or teacher to be in, to be told what is wrong with one’s son and that he needs additional tests which are 18 months down the line. Eventually that parent had the tests done privately. I believe if one has tests done privately, there is a problem with recognition of the report. The school said the parent was better off staying in the public system because, although it would take longer, it would carry more weight. I do not believe that is the case but that was the impression given. Some parents weigh up whether to get it done privately or to hang on to do it in the public system if that will carry more weight. This causes huge problems.