Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

I move:

That Dáil Éireann,

recognising the lengthy waiting lists for psychological assessment in primary and secondary schools;

noting an increase of just 7 additional psychologists to the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, to date this year;

given the Government commitment in January to appoint 31 additional psychologists to the NEPS in 2007;

acknowledging that a large proportion of schools remain excluded from the NEPS system eight years after its establishment;

noting that a reported 23 school-going children died by suicide in the last school year;

recognising that many parents and charitable organisations are forced to pay for private assessments for children due to a lack of NEPS resources; and

considering that there is currently no dedicated speech and language service available within the school system;calls on the Government to:

immediately increase the number of NEPS psychologists to meet Government commitments for 2007;

streamline the organisations involved in delivering psychological assessments to schools to encourage a more efficient level of service;

extend NEPS services to all schools across the country without further delay; and

create a speech therapy service within the education system to cater exclusively for children and young people in need of this service.

I welcome the Minister for Education and Science to the House and thank her for taking this debate. Today and tomorrow we will discuss an absolutely crucial area of education, namely, the current shambolic nature of psychological assessment. I have brought this matter to the floor of the House as it requires urgent attention from the Government.

Despite promises by the Minister for Education and Science that a comprehensive schools psychological service would be put in place, eight years after the establishment of NEPS about half of all primary schools have no service while the number of secondary schools with a designated psychologist is falling. Our schools have one of the worst ratios of psychologists to pupils in Europe. Is there any wonder why we continue to hear about the appalling tragedies of young lives lost, broken or even ended because there is no psychological intervention? Having a proper psychological service is not a luxury, it is a basic necessity in modern education and the catch-up under way in Irish education leaves a lot to be desired.

The most basic requirement on the part of the Department of Education and Science where a child presents with special needs is to have that child assessed as soon as possible so that an individual educational plan can be put together for the child. That is not happening at the moment as students have to wait many years for a proper assessment to take place. If one speaks to school principals on a regular basis, as I do, the issue that is highlighted repeatedly is the appalling waiting time for psychological assessments. While the waiting goes on, the child is in a classroom setting, often disruptive and unable to contribute to the work of the class. The child's experience of education becomes a day-by-day frustration as deeper problems go unchecked within our school system.

This motion demands that the Minister for Education and Science gets to grips with this issue. She and her predecessors have had long enough to resolve the bottlenecks that have been evident in the NEPS service in recent years. She has had long enough to recruit additional psychologists into the service and roll out the service to all schools. It is time that excuses came to an end and promises were fulfilled.

If one looks at the NEPS budget for next year, what is proposed is a cut of 6% from the amount of money received this year. One of the few areas in the education budget where cutbacks are proposed in the context of next year's Estimate is under the national educational psychological service. How can the Minister propose a cut in a service where she knows that the demand exists and where she has failed to keep her pre-election promises?

Parents and schools are increasingly turning to charitable organisations to get their children psychologically assessed. The situation is so bad that the Society of St. Vincent de Paul has become one of the largest providers of psychological assessments. It is a disgrace that a charitable organisation has to fund the ongoing psychological assessment of children in our school system. Until September this year, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul funded at least 20 assessments every week at a cost of €320 per assessment, with between 600 and 1,000 children being assessed annually. Primary and secondary school principals from every part of the country regularly sought support from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for such assessments.

No doubt the Minister will say that the new protocol agreed between her Department and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is in place from September 2007 to January 2008, even though this issue first came to public attention last March or April. Effectively the Department has asked the Society of St. Vincent de Paul not to foot the Bill for these assessments. Because parents and principals are being asked to go directly to NEPS in the first instance, this will place additional pressure on the service between now and next January. There is considerable unease about the manner in which that protocol was negotiated between St. Vincent de Paul and the Minister's Department when the issue first came to public attention last March and April.

There are approximately 185,000 school-age children with disabilities and special educational needs in Ireland, including about 86,000 with mental health difficulties, 63,000 with specific learning disabilities and just under 5,000 with autistic spectrum disorders. Twenty three school-going children died by suicide last year, yet the Government has repeatedly broken its promise to provide an adequate psychological assessment service for our schools. Eight years after the psychological service was established, half of all schools still do not have a service to which to turn. There are 800,000 pupils in primary and secondary schools, but only enough State psychologists to assess one in every 50 children.

The number of psychologists working with the State service is 134. Where are the 31 additional posts the Minister promised last January? At the last count, she repeated that promise on 21 occasions from January to the general election. She promised 31 full-time additional psychologists to work with the NEPS service, yet only seven have been provided this year. That is a shocking indictment given the scale of the promises and commitments she entered into before the election.

Fianna Fáil's document, An Agreed Programme for Government, pledged 200 school psychologists by 2009, but how will this happen when the budget for 2008 is to be cut? At this rate the Government will miss its 2009 target and hundreds of school children will continue to go without adequate assessment.

When NEPS was first established, the former Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Micheál Martin, promised that within five years the service would have 200 psychologists. That promise was made in 1999 and is yet another example of the grotesque spinning machine that operates under the Government. It is typical of this Administration that promises are made and broken, without so much as an apology or an explanation, and become part and parcel of the way the Government does its business. When the former Minister made that promise of 200 psychologists by 2004, it was 200 fewer then the requirement estimated by the National Council for Special Education.

NEPS should be put on the same statutory footing as organisations such as the National Council for Special Education and the National Educational Welfare Board. That was the original intention when NEPS was first established, an intention fully supported by the then Minister, Deputy Martin.

Under the existing departmental guidelines only two children out of every 100 can be assessed each year. A principal recently told me that if there are 400 children in a school and only eight can be picked for assessment, one must choose the most severe cases. Effectively, that means that fourth, fifth and sixth class students are not given priority because that goes to younger children. It means children with real learning difficulty are going into post-primary education without ever getting treatment.

Little or nothing is done for the vast majority with a disability, which is estimated by the National Council for Special Education at 18% of children. They travel through the education system with little or no support and are often the first to fall through the system when they get to post-primary education.

When a student makes the transition from primary to post-primary education, pupils do not carry the resources with them. It seems crazy that an entirely new assessment has to be carried out, which in itself delays the resource response from the Department and makes life much more difficult for students and their families.

I recognise that the Department has introduced resources at primary level to deal with learning support under the general allocation model, which allows for a certain number of resource teachers for schools depending on their status as disadvantaged or otherwise.

However, at second level, the only way to get resource teachers is to have students formally assessed. Once they have been assessed as being in need of support, resource hours will be allocated, which places additional pressure on the NEPS system. Although it is clearly important to put significant resources into primary schools to ensure early intervention, many children do not receive the supports they need in primary school. The ASTI has highlighted that 40% of pupils who go forward for assessment are deemed not to be in need of additional supports because they are marginally above the cut-off point for assistance. These children then progress through school without additional help because the assessment process has essentially ruled them out of even before they have started.

Teachers do not receive the in-service training required to cope with children in need of learning support. Additional training was supposed to be provided to coincide with the introduction of the EPSEN Act 2004 but neither the Act nor the training programme has been implemented in schools, despite the NCSE publishing recommendations in October 2006 on how the Act should be implemented. I am aware in recent weeks of a proposal from third level colleges where psychological assessments of not less than three years old, of any applicant with dyslexia or other learning difficulty who has applied to obtain a college place, must take place. Requiring students with a specific learning difficulty to furnish psychological assessments carried out in the past three years to support their college application puts even more pressure on them and the NEPS. Almost 2,000 of the 60,000 applicants for CAO courses last year were students with physical or learning difficulties.

The Minister will claim schools that do not have recourse to a dedicated psychologist and are outside the NEPS system can obtain support through the scheme for commissioning psychological assessments, SCPA. A panel of private psychologists is provided for schools but the restrictions on the number of assessments that can be carried out in any year means that the number of children waiting for assessment grows and grows. Recently I was informed by the Minister, by way of a reply to a parliamentary question, that fewer private psychologists were available to carry out assessments now by comparison with the start of the year. The rate of payment for assessments under the SCPA has not increased since 2001, an issue that has been repeatedly brought to the Minister's attention.

While the NEPS psychologists provide not only assessments, but also support and development in schools, private psychologists simply carry out an assessment. The automatic follow-up provided for under the NEPS model does not apply. There is evidence that not only are psychologists pulling out of the scheme, but also that some are taking the minimum number of assessments in order that they can remain as NEPS approved psychologists. Schools report that since the fee paid to them by the Department has not been increased, SCPA psychologists are negotiating with schools and completing two assessments in the time it would normally take to do one. This rules out proper briefing time with parents and teachers, with the result that the child does not obtain the service needed to support him or her in the school system.

Attracting new psychologists into the NEPS requires not only funding but also proper planning to deliver sufficient college places for those likely to be employed by the State. One of the main difficulties with recruitment of suitably qualified psychologists is the lack of graduates. Approximately eight educational psychologists graduate from UCD every year, with a similar number qualifying from Queens University Belfast. The Government and the Department are not doing enough to provide more places for psychologists at third level, which is clear because the demand cannot be met.

I will return to this issue tomorrow evening. The current system is shambolic and the Minister must be held accountable for not delivering on her promises. Children's lives are being destroyed by a failure to carry out assessments. That is what the motion is about.

See this speech in context