Sir, – I work as a special education teacher in a mainstream primary school. Outside of doing our absolute best to meet the needs of our pupils with additional needs in class, a great deal of time which should be spent preparing for teaching and learning is spent fighting on their behalf for adequate support and resources from the Department of Education.
Meanwhile, National Educational Psychological Service and HSE services are so chronically underfunded and under-staffed that children must languish on waiting lists for years, potentially being denied a place in an appropriate post-primary school setting because they lack the requisite recommendation in a psychological report, a report which our Government has failed to facilitate.
Children with serious mental health difficulties are not even placed on the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service waiting list because they don’t meet the mysterious criteria. If they do secure a place on the list they may be waiting years just to be assessed.
The most spurious of reasons are found to reject applications for assistive technology, denying a child access to a potentially life-changing laptop for the sake of saving the Department of Education a few hundred euro.
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Special education teachers are striving every day to support children in severe psychological distress, a role for which we are both unqualified and unsupported.
We draft and redraft begging letters to the Department of Education and submit evidence that our children are deserving of what should be the most basic supports.
In this context, Minister of State for Special Education Josepha Madigan’s recent “naming and shaming” of four Dublin schools would be shocking were it not so predictable.
She accused hard-working teachers and principals, some of whom are supporting the most disadvantaged pupils in our capital of being unwilling to support children with additional needs, while our Government routinely neglects the needs of these children and their families.
Josepha Madigan has once again engaged in a cynical exercise in manipulation by deflecting blame from where it belongs to professionals working on the front line. – Yours, etc,
GRACE SHORTEN,
Bettystown,
Co Meath.
Sir, – Minister of State for Special Education Josepha Madigan and the Government appear hell-bent on introducing legislation to compel schools to provide places for children with special educational needs at relatively short notice (News, June 28th ).
Ms Madigan should engage with and talk to some of those schools and teachers who are already delivering special education in very challenging circumstances.
She might then realise the huge dedication and commitment of those schools, teachers and special needs assistants (SNAs) to such education, despite inadequate and substandard accommodation and facilities (failure to provide even prefab accommodation, although committed to by the Department of Education years ago); lack of adequate training and support for teachers and SNAs; lack of occupational and speech and language therapy advice and support for schools and teachers; and enduring regular physical assaults while in class.
Rather than grabbing headlines by enacting emergency legislation, Ms Madigan might, I suggest, achieve much more in terms of delivery of special education if those already providing it felt valued, listened to, and supported, not just by the Department of Education, but also by the other State agencies, including the HSE. – Yours, etc,
PAUL CROWE,
Limerick.