AT LEAST half of the schools which specialise in providing Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) to children with autism have signed up to controversial proposals from the Department of Education to recognise them as special schools.
The department sent out letters to 12 pilot ABA schools giving them a fortnight to vote on proposals which would see them officially recognised as special schools with access to permanent State funding.
The schools’ boards of management have been given until the end of this week to decide whether to accept the offer.At least six have voted to accept the deal.
The department’s letter of offer states that ABA should be provided as part of a wider array of other teaching methods – also known as the eclectic approach – which also uses picture exchange communication system, social stories and developmentally based approaches.
It also proposes changes such as reclassifying ABA tutors as special needs assistants and replacing ABA tutors with trained primary school teachers. Saplings, which runs five schools with about 85 pupils in Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Carlow and Westmeath, says four of its schools have voted to accept the deal.
A fifth school is due to vote later this week. “I’m absolutely confident and comfortable that this is the right step to take,” said one of the founders of Saplings, Marc de Salvo.
Autism Ireland is the patron body for six ABA schools around the country. Two of these – Abacus in Drogheda and Abacus in Kilnamanagh – have voted in favour.
Jacinta O’Brien, one of Autism Ireland’s directors and a member of the board of management at the Abacus school in Drogheda, acknowledged there were mixed feelings over the deal. “There are positives and negatives. We’ll try to enter into this with a spirit of ‘let’s make it work’. It’s very important we preserve the ethos of evidence-based instruction,” she said.
Daniel O’Mahony, whose son is enrolled at the Abacus school in Kilbarrack in Dublin, said: “We’re dreading the changes. They will change the entire structure of the school.”
Yvonne Uí Chuanacháin, whose son Seán was at the centre of a Supreme Court case over the right to education, said: “There is a way to offer full ABA programmes within the primary or special school system for the children who need it, but the department are refusing to consider it and have rejected it out of hand.”
