Sir, - I refer to the report by Sean Flynn, your Education Editor, in your edition of November 26th, on special needs education. In that report, which refers to the increase on special education expenditure from £7 million to £70 million over the past three years, a source is quoted as saying that there was "huge frustration" within the Department of Education that the real progress achieved in recent years was not being more widely acknowledged.
Perhaps the reason for "progress" not being acknowledged is that there is more required to address issues in special education than increasing the numbers of resource teachers, psychologists, and special needs assistants. The quantitative increase in such personnel has become almost a mantra for Department of Education and Science spokespersons in recent months. It may well be seen, in future years, that these years have been marked by profligacy, unless some more fundamental issues are addressed.
Far more important than the increased number of personnel is the nature and quality of the curricular experiences being provided to people with special educational needs, be they children or adults. Indeed, this point was adverted to by you, Sir, in an Editorial on the Jamie Sinnott case last July. If the relevance and appropriateness of the curriculum is not ensured, additional personnel alone will not provide a solution.
Neither, may I suggest, will the inadequate administrative service within the special education section of the Department of Education and Science. Anyone who tries to contact that section cannot but have sympathy for the overworked officials who work there, but is it really acceptable that the telephone will be answered only at certain limited hours each day? Or is it acceptable that it can take more than six weeks to have a child with special educational needs issued with a bus permit, to transport him to an appropriate educational facility of his parents' choice?
I have been a principal of a special school for children with special educational needs for almost 30 years. When my colleagues, a group of special school principals, recently invited a senior official of the Department of Education and Science to address our meeting on the topic of the new National Council for Special Education, we were not even afforded the courtesy of a reply. It is not only within the Department that there is "huge fustration". - Yours, etc.,
Patrick E. O'Keeffe, Principal, St Francis School, Portlaoise, Co Laois.