Dáil debates
Thursday, 18 May 2017
Topical Issue Debate
Special Educational Needs Service Provision
5:40 pm
Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to raise the issue of what I believe is discrimination against children who started primary school in 2016 and those who will start in 2017 from consideration and allocation of resources under the new special education teaching resource model. The Minister will be aware that I raised this with the Minister in a parliamentary question on 3 May 2017 on this very topic. Parents and teachers who are concerned about the new system have told me that it is a new system of combining what was learning support, which was specific to the needs of a particular child, and high incidence special education needs. These are now being combined under this new special education resource teaching model. That might sound well and good, but my problem, and that of many parents and teachers, is the assessment upon which the information is based. The problem is going to be very serious for the first two years. The difficulty is that the Department has made allocations to schools which are fairly rigid for the next two years. It would be an extraordinarily exceptional situation for a school to be able to make a case to win an appeal to have its allocation changed under this model.
Last autumn, schools were asked to submit information and the allocation was announced on 7 March 2017. The circulars that were issued from the Department, one to the primary schools and the other to second level schools, outlining the full details of the scheme and a letter followed on how to go about an appeal.
The issue I am highlighting is that children who started in 2016 did not have any medical or professional assessment at that point, so their needs could not have been taken into consideration when these matters were being considered last winter and before the allocation was announced in March this year. They had not yet found their way into the system, they were brand new in their new schools in junior infants. That is a very bad situation but we will also find that children with specific problems starting next September who have not had a previous diagnosis will find there is no extra allocation in their schools.
What confounded me about the Minister's reply to the parliamentary question is that when I highlighted those two specific issues, the Minister said, "The new allocations to schools will include provision to support all pupils in the schools, including where a child receives a diagnosis after the allocation is received by a school, or where there are newly enrolling pupils to the school." He is saying that the allocation will include those whose information was not there, because they did not have a diagnosis.
The Minister went on to say, "For students who start school from September 2017, with a specific diagnosis, either in junior infants or transferring from another school, the resources they need will already be in the school under the new model." The Minister is telling me, the parents and the teachers that he is psychic - that was the school's response to me. The Minister had made an allocation based on the information he had last year and in his written reply he said that if children starting in 2017 have a specific diagnosis, the resources will already be there based on the previous allocation which he had issued. The Minister is saying he knew those children were going to present. He did not know they were going to present, he could not have known they were going to present. Reading that, the school principal said that the only way the Minister could know that is if he thinks he is psychic. I want the Minister to be flexible with the appeals system. That is it in a nutshell. There is no other route for parents to get this matter administered. I do not want a rigid appeals system, I want flexibility.
Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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This is a new scheme and I understand people wanting to tease out what it means. First, I want to make it clear that it has been recommended by the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, which is an independent body, it had been conducted with a pilot of 47 schools where it had a very positive reception. It involves an increase in the number of teachers provided by 900, so at least 1,200 schools will get additional resources. It will mean that if one has a child with special educational needs, one no longer needs a diagnostic test to establish support for the child. Instead of enrolling, waiting for a diagnostic test and then eventually getting an allocation later on, the school is pre-equipped with the resource to meet the needs of the children with complex needs.
The Deputy asks how we know the level of enrolment of children with complex needs. What has been done is that a profile of the whole school has been taken, so that if X% is children with complex needs, they are provided for, even though those children have not yet presented. In other words, a profile of the school and the expected level of children who will arrive with complex needs based on the existing profile of the school is used to predict how many children will turn up with special educational needs. That is a clear and known input.
The Department has also made provision for an appeal so that if, for example, the norm was three children with very complex needs per cohort of the school and for some reason a family moved into the area and that three increased to seven then, under the appeals mechanism, the Department would clearly take that into account. Similarly if the school is very rapidly growing and a developmental school under the developmental status, that would be a criterion for the school to get additional help.
We are providing more resources in this sphere, we are guaranteeing that no school loses out so that every school will have additional existing provision. We are making sure that the school is geared up with that extra resource from day 1 and we are also promoting a much more inclusive approach to the way in which children with special education needs are integrated into the school. That has been a feature which has been particularly successful in the pilots. Instead of children being withdrawn for their special support, as had been the case, this is a much more integrated approach with group, individual, and classroom support. I was told by those who had been through the pilot that it had been a boost, not only for the children with special needs but all the children in the school, and that all the teaching staff saw that the integration and successful learning outcomes for those children with special needs became a whole school project.
We will provide support to the school in terms of capacity building. There will be an integrated support service in the NCSE. We are doing everything possible to make sure this will achieve the benefits that were clearly delivered in the pilot.
I can understand the concerns because this is a different method. Its avoids the €1,000 expense of diagnostic tests. The Deputy knows that schools in disadvantaged areas could not afford that. Principals were playing God in trying to decide which of a number of children they would send for diagnostic tests. That has all been thrown away and we have a much fairer basis for allocating the available resource.
5:50 pm
Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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I understand why the Minister made the decision. As he said, it was partly due to financial and administrative reasons and the time taken for diagnostic tests. He referred to socioeconomic criteria for schools. The profile involves an averaging system, but children are not average. Every child is different. That is the essential point that is being lost in the system. It is administratively convenient.
I am speaking on behalf of the parents and schools who have come to me about this issue. The Minister has said there is no need for diagnostic tests. Without such tests, sometimes particular conditions or children's special requirements will not be made available to a school principal, who cannot be an expert. Medical and professional diagnostic tests were necessary to identify specific requirements for children until now. The Minister decided that costs money and instead proposed to save some time, scrap the system and allow principals to muddle away as best they can. That is not really good enough because principals are not experts and do not have the required diagnostic skills that professionals have.
We are shoving the old system to one side. The Minister is giving more flexibility to principals who now have to play God a little bit more because they are not receiving specific reports on specific children.
I am also concerned about the paragraph in the circular which states that some schools may now choose to enrol children that they know have special needs in these areas because it will eat into the allocation they already have. Essentially, the Department said the Minister reserves the right to review the allocation. In other words, the Minister is threatening to punish the other children in a school by reviewing its allocation if it does not enrol children who would otherwise have enrolled in the school and may have received an extra allocation.
The appeals process was very short. The process began in early March and appeals had to be in by the end of March after the earlier announcement. How many appeals has the Minister received? That information would be a good indication as to whether the problem is significant or manageable. I ask the Minister to be flexible with appeals, given that this is a new system.
Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I hope I did not mislead the Deputy when I said there is no need for diagnostic test for a child to get support. I am not saying that diagnostic tests are no longer relevant or valuable. A diagnostic test can be valuable in the hands of a teacher in order to give an indication of what is needed.
In many cases, the special learning needs of a child will be quite obvious to a teacher. Under this model, teachers will not have to wait for a diagnostic test to be done before they can provide teaching support to a child. Where a diagnostic test is of value in setting out an educational programme for a child, that will be used and will be a valuable input for a teacher.
I reiterate that we are putting 900 extra teachers and €54 million of resources in place in order to support the improved model. It is not a question of shortchanging people who will be enrolling in September this year compared to those who enrolled last September. There will be more resources available to meet the needs of children this September than there were last year.
I will get the Deputy the details of the number of people involved in the verification process. At this stage, schools are mainly asking how their calculation was done. I do not think a school has said a profile said it would have three children with complex needs but it has much more than that. That sort of appeal has not reached us yet. I will try to get the Deputy some information on the state of play of the verification process.