Special needs students at second-level should receive similar resources to those being put in place in primary schools, the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) has claimed in its Budget submission to the Government.
And in a move aimed at recovering ground lost to the primary sector on the issue of special needs resources, it calls for a weighted system of special needs allocation, similar to that used at primary level, to be introduced.
It also says that no second-level class should have more than 25 pupils, and calls for the recruitment of at least 1,200 extra teachers.
According to the ASTI, despite the fact that Ireland had the fourth largest GDP in the OECD in 2003, expenditure per second-level student is equivalent to just €5,200. This means Ireland comes 20th out of 26 OECD countries in this regard, with countries like the UK, Spain, Portugal and Italy spending more on their second-level students.
"It is public policy that up to 11 per cent of the school-going population are considered to have special needs," the ASTI states in its submission.
"The current system of allocating resources teachers to schools is inadequate . . . the ASTI wants the Department of Education and Science to put an adequate system in place to ensure that students with special needs transferring to second-level schools have their needs met." This system should include the introduction of a weighted system based on the premise that all schools will have some students with special needs, but others will need individual supports, it states.
Access to the services of qualified resources teachers should also be available to all second-level schools. Similarly, any school with 300 or more students should have the services of a full-time learning support teacher to improve literacy levels.
The submission also states that Ireland still has "unacceptably large" class sizes at second-level, and cites recent figures showing that almost 20 per cent of Junior Cycle classes have more than 30 pupils. A further 31 per cent of second-level classes have between 25 and 29 pupils, meaning up to 90,000 adolescents are in classes of more than 25.
As National Science Week begins today, the submission calls for annual funding of schools to be augmented according to the number of students taking science courses.