Analysis: The Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, took everyone by surprise yesterday with his announcement of his plan to create over 350 new special needs teaching posts. Despite the virtual public service jobs embargo, the new jobs are being created at a cost of over €15 million.
The announcement helped to defuse growing anger among teachers about what they would see as a scandalous level of under provision for the estimated 12 per cent of primary pupils with mild and severe learning difficulties.
Over 20 per cent of motions to the INTO congress refer to the special needs scandal, a reflection of the frustration teachers have experienced as they struggle to cope with the problem in their particular schools.
The Dempsey move is also designed to defuse a slow-burning, but potentially explosive, political controversy about special needs.
For several months, both Ms Jan O'Sullivan of Labour and Ms Olwyn Enright of Fine Gael have exposed the full scale of the special needs crisis. In a statement on Monday, Ms O'Sullivan posed a question, which appeared set to dog Mr Dempsey for months; why were 7,000 pupils already assessed by a psychologist still waiting for special needs teachers?
It is all a long way from the promises made by the Government in the wake of the Sinnott judgement. After the ruling, the then Minister for Education, Dr Woods, claimed he had been given a "blank cheque"' by Government to address the crisis.
The new teaching posts will not specifically assist those with autism or very serious learning difficulties. These will continue to be assessed and provided with their own individual programmes. Instead, the new teachers will assist about 45,000 pupils with what are known as mild learning difficulties.
The current situation was summarised by one primary school principal yesterday. Mr Tom Feeney, principal of Scoil Naomh Fiachra in Letterkenny, Co Donegal said he is forced to juggle resources and teachers in order to provide a decent level of provision to children with learning needs.
With 265 pupils in his school, he has only one full-time resource teacher, one part-time learning support who is allowed to work for only six hours per week in the school and one other learning support teacher who is "shared" with other schools.
Mr Feeney said at any given time he would have about ten per cent of pupils requiring specialist attention. In addition, his school has made seven other applications to the Department for a psychological assessment, but a decision was still awaited.
He said he felt particularly for one very bright student who had waited and waited for assistance but had now moved on to second-level.
"I feel the whole system has let that child down. He is not been given the opportunity he should to realise his potential," he said.
Mr Dempsey said psychological assessments would no longer be needed. Schools themselves would now have the resources and could allocate them.
But there are already concerns about how the burden of assessing the needs of pupils will pass to school principals.
Yesterday, Ms Enright said this was a huge responsibility to place on school principals who are not trained psychologists. "While the new teachers are welcome, I am sceptical about the timing of this. It looks like a short-term measure," she said.
The task of deciding who does and who does not qualify for special needs support will be a difficult one for teachers.
Mr Feeney said principals would inevitably come under pressure from parents who believe their children need specialist assistance, even if the school does not share this view.
But other teachers took a more upbeat view. One said: "The new system will hugely reduce the bureaucratic burden on teachers where applications must be made and processed for months, even years, on end."
