Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

I propose to share time with Deputies Sherlock and Lynch. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate and thank the Sinn Féin Party for tabling the motion.

I have many concerns regarding the proposed weighted system and I intend to address mainly that issue. I have raised the issue many times by way of priority question, written question and so on, and the Labour, Fine Gael and Green Parties put forward a joint motion last October on this issue.

I acknowledge the Minister's announcement that she will carry out a review of the weighted system and that she hopes it will be finished quite soon. If it goes through as proposed, with the allocation of resources depending on whether the school is a boys' school, a girls' school, a mixed school or a disadvantaged school, the result will be a huge transfer of resources from some schools to other schools. The schools that will lose out will be the ones that have a verifiable need for these resources based assessments carried out by trained educational psychologists, mostly by NEPS psychologists but, in some cases by psychologists from outside the NEPS where there are not enough NEPS psychologists.

There is something wrong with a system that removes resources from children who have a verifiable need and gives them to children who have not. That is a terrible waste and maladministration of public resources. I am not sure that any type of review of the weighted system will solve that problem because there is an uneven distribution of special needs. We are talking here of the most common needs. Children who have a less common need are entitled to an individual assessment of need. The children we are talking about here are those with dyslexia, those with mild and borderline intellectual disability. I am not sure whether children with ADHD and ADD are included because that has not been clarified.

Studies have been carried out that suggest that more than 1,000 primary schools will lose resources. I accept that more schools will gain resources but the point is that the ones that are losing are ones that have a verifiable need. If the system goes ahead as intended by the former Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Noel Dempsey, 72 schools will lose a total of 40 special education resource learning support teaching post equivalents. Some 31 of these posts will be redistributed among 61 schools in the county but nine special education resource learning support teaching posts will be lost to my county. The same will happen in a number of other counties. Some counties will gain.

My point is that this system is not based on any kind of evaluation of the needs of the children in the schools. The evidence suggests that these needs are widely distributed. Therefore, any kind of quota system, as this weighted system is, will not be fair. A study was carried out in consultation with NEPS in Dundalk and Leitrim. It has not yet been published, but I understand it shows that some schools have no need of extra resources while in others up to 50% of children have resource needs. It cannot, therefore, be fair to distribute resources in this way.

Similarly, the intellectual disability database suggested wide variation. A recent study on disadvantage showed that disadvantaged schools are likely to have three times as much literacy need as schools that are not disadvantaged. No matter how well the system is weighted towards disadvantage, I cannot see that it will adequately cater for schools in disadvantaged areas. In some cases it will result in resources being given where they are not needed. I am very concerned about this. I would like the Minister of State to address this issue with her senior Minister. What will happen next year to schools where 40% of the children have a verifiable need?

I accept the point the Minister made that it is a good idea to have resources in a school when the children arrive. Surely it would be better to put in resources on the basis of a verified pattern in a school over a period of time rather than simply on the basis of numbers. That would be in some way fair if these needs have existed in a school for a time. I urge a proper and total review of the weighted system. I would scrap it and instead put in a system that is fair.

Last night the Minister referred to the fact that in 1999 the Government took a decision that has transformed the level of provision for pupils with special educational needs and that they would be entitled to an automatic response. I commend the Government for that decision. However, the current proposal takes away that right. That is wrong. The Minister said during Question Time and again last night that the children would continue to get the level of service appropriate to their needs. Will those needs be assessed by NEPS psychologists or will there be a new type of evaluation of needs? Where children had, perhaps, two and a half hours of one to one resource teaching, will they now get two and half hours in a group of six?

The SENOs will be a good addition to the system. However, the former Mid-Western Health Board area, where I come from, should have 11 speech therapists but there are only four, and only six of the 16 NEPS psychologist posts are filled. I do not know about the other health board areas but I believe they may be in the same position. The service cannot be provided if we do not have the specialists. These are my main concern regarding the weighted system.

I have a few more minutes in which to touch on the other two issues that are of concern in this motion. My colleague, Deputy Lynch will address the issue of autism. However, I want to say one thing about it. I met a group of parents last week who have set up a preschool for autistic children but they fear they will run out of funds and be unable to continue. This facility has made an enormous difference to their children and they have been scraping money together to keep it going. Others around the country are in the same situation. Needed supports should be provided for a group who are particularly in need of support, and it is very effective if provided at an early stage. They need a much greater level of support, and parents' groups around the country should get the supports they need.

The issue of class size is another issue about which I am concerned. It is disappointing that one of the first things the Minister for Education and Science said when she came into office was that she would not be able to fulfil the promise in the programme for Government to reduce class sizes so that all children under the age of nine years would be in classes of 20 or less. I hope that announcement is reversed and the promise in the programme for Government fulfilled. I have received replies to parliamentary questions indicating that more than 100,000 primary school children are in classes of more than 30. That does not work. I spoke to a mother in Leixlip last week when I was canvassing, whose child is in a senior infants class of 35. That is unmanageable and must be addressed. More teachers are being trained and it should be possible to address the problem.

There is a problem regarding special needs at second level as well. There are no adequate guidelines and no adequate training. Children who had support at primary level which discontinued at second level face serious difficulties. Class size is also an issue at second level. More than 35,000 teenagers are in classes greater than 30 in second level schools according to information from the ASTI. While we tend to focus on primary level, there are problems at second level.

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