The proposals announced this week by the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) on allocating teaching resources for students with special educational needs are a profound and positive step.
The current scheme of allocating learning support to schools in my opinion is wrong, and has always been wrong. A scheme that allocates the same resources to all schools irrespective of the needs of an individual school perpetuates inequality.
It creates an uneven playing field between parents who can afford to pay for a diagnosis and those who cannot. No child's educational outcome should ever be based on a parents’ ability to pay, but yet this is exactly what the current model allowed.
The new model of allocation of learning support to schools is a seismic shift in special education policy in Ireland, and will ensure that all children regardless of their financial background will have appropriate educational resources to support them to reach their real potential.
This model will ensure that the 11,000 resources teachers in our system will now be allocated on the basis of the individual school; taking into account criteria such as the number of children with complex special educational needs, the percentage of students performing below a certain threshold and the socio-economic context of the school.
Before I was elected to the Dáil, I worked for 13 years as a resource teacher in disadvantaged schools and I know only too well how many students went undiagnosed due to the current model.
This new model will ensure that children with a special educational need, regardless of their background, will have adequate educational support so that they can reach their full potential.
I want to thank the NCSE for their proposal and I look forward to seeing these proposals being implemented at the earliest stage possible.
More Information
The NCSE’s proposed model - Delivering for Students with Special Educational Needs; A better and more Equitable way – is available here.
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