Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

My party raised this issue last October but we did not receive a clear reason from the Minister for proceeding with this system. Why is the Minister now changing the system if she believed her own reasoning? The reasoning was flawed because the situation was not improved in the case of many children. As the previous Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey, admitted, it would disimprove the lot of many children.

I remind the Minister that learning difficulties come in many guises. The appendix to circular 09/04 lists 14 disabilities that come under the consideration of that departmental directive. I again ask whether this will be changed. The Government must realise it cannot neglect borderline, milder or specific learning difficulties to meet the needs of students with more moderate or severe difficulties. All students are entitled to be treated equally and fairly. Borderline and mild difficulties can become compounded if ignored over time. In addition, children with specific learning difficulties can be assisted, but can also suffer a considerable lack of confidence and educational attainment if they do not receive the right help at the right time. In my experience and in that of my party colleagues, since last summer many children with borderline and mild difficulties are being ignored. To put it bluntly, it appears that their disability is neither obvious enough nor apparent enough, nor is it causing enough disruption in the class to warrant attention from the Department of Education and Science. It is this new direction which causes me most difficulty. There may be no circulars specifying it but it is certainly one of the single biggest issues that I deal with in my constituency offices and clinics, and I know other Deputies have the same experience.

Children who up to this year had 2.5 resource hours teaching per week find they have none because they no longer fall within the Department's guidelines. It does not seem to matter that their psychologist, the only person making a decision who has met and examined the children in question, has recommended that they need resource hours. Their parents who know the child better than anyone feel that they need this help. The teacher who has the child in his or her class every day believes that the child should be given extra assistance. The resource teacher who had previously been teaching the child is of the opinion that much more progress could be made if the child could continue with the resource hours.

What will the Minister say to the parents of a six year old boy whose psychologist recommends he attend a special school because of his speech problems and discrepancies between his verbal and performance domains and who cannot even get resource hours from the school he is attending? The only response given is "number of hours recommended, zero". What will the Minister say to the parents of a little boy whose school has been unofficially giving him five resource hours per week and which is allowing him for the first time to make what his mother described in a letter to the Minister last December as "slow but steady progress", but the Department is refusing him resource hours from September of this year, despite the assessments recommending this? What will the Minister say to the numerous parents whose school principals have told them that they will have to await the outcome of her review of special education and the introduction of the weighted system before their children will receive resource hours?

The nonsensical situation still remains that young boys and girls are allocated special needs assistance but only until lunchtime or 2 p.m. when the school day continues to 3 p.m. Despite promises, this situation has not been improved in many instances.

Referred to also in this motion is the commitment to reduce class sizes which was made by the Government in An Agreed Programme for Government 2002. The commitment made was clear and unambiguous and stated that over the next five years, maximum class guidelines would be introduced to ensure that the average size of classes for children under nine would be below the international best practice guideline of the ratio of 20:1. The importance of this commitment should not be underestimated. It is somewhat surprising that the Minister for Education and Science so casually discarded this commitment last year.

By describing this undertaking as a "noble aspiration", the Minister entirely failed to take account of the conviction of those in the education sector and the parents of children being taught in crowded conditions that this was not an aspiration but a sincere promise. At the time the Minister withdrew from this commitment, her Department stated it would take at least 2,000 extra teachers to meet the target and that it was not feasible to recruit this number in the time set out in the programme for Government. I dispute these figures and I have always thought that the Government was hiding behind the fig leaf of teachers' supply when they simply do not want to hire the additional teaching staff.

The INTO claims the target was achievable and pointed to the fact that almost 2,000 new teachers would be trained over the coming year. This figure included those graduating from St. Patrick's College and Mary Immaculate College as well as the smaller colleges. The reduction of class sizes is a very important step in improving general primary education. There are currently approximately 215,000 children under nine in classes from junior infants to second class of whom over 80%, 170,000 children, are in classes with more than 20 children. The average Irish class size is 24.5 while the OECD average is 22. Most EU countries have significantly smaller class sizes. It is unacceptable that today more than 110,000 children are in classes of between 30 and 39 in number.

The Government amendment to the motion notes the extra resources being allocated to tackle educational disadvantage, yet there is no evaluation of the results of this investment. One thousand children per year are still failing to make the transition from primary to post-primary school. The Education Welfare Board is still critically underfunded and the problem of truancy is greater than anticipated. Fine Gael and the Labour Party raised this issue in the House last October. The Special Education Council, which had been planned long before then, has since been established. How much longer must children wait?

See this speech in context