Access Undone: The Collapse of Special Education [Episode 6]

Welcome to access on done. The collapse of special education. I special podcast from unsharp dot Nash. This is Simon Lewis. A teacher and principal for over 20 years. In this series, I look back over the short history of how children with additional needs have slowly but surely been cast aside by the education system. I argue that much like the crimes of the Catholic church on children, where the scandal of the 20th century, that how the state is treating children with additional needs will be the scandal of the 21st. During the Aon debacle. The department of education run a number of webinars. To explain the process to principals. I attended one of them. And I sat in my office, staring at my zoom screen with over 30 of my colleagues. There was a nice man and woman from the department of education. Who explained that there was a court ruling that meant that schools would now be responsible for filling out the education profile for the Aon form. He explained that they had run a pilot in several schools and that everyone was really happy with dot pirate. And there was very little workload involved. He thanked us all for our cooperation. When it came to question time. I spoke up. I explained I was one of the so-called pilot schools and I told them how long the form actually took to fill out. Much longer than the 20 to 30 minutes he had advertised. I explained that I had actually surveyed several schools and none of them were very happy at all with this. I asked the room. Had anyone else, any thoughts on it or had they been involved? It's a very odd feeling. Seeing 30 sets of eyes looked down after you say something. And you just know. They are letting you drown. The guy from the department told me that my complaint was the first he'd heard about this. He'd been to lots of schools in the pilot. And that everyone. He had spoken to. I was happy. Over the last few months. I've charged. It had the department of education and the NCSE have slowly, but surely made things worse for children with additional needs. I argued that as soon as the recession came in 2008, it was these children that were hit the hardest. And when we emerged from the emergency these same children remained rooted in austerity. Where the resources that were taken away from them were never returned. The NCSE never criticized the government for failing to fund their service properly. And in fact, their CEO at the time, Teresa Griffin welcomed their budget in 2012, which included a 15% cut to resource hours. Instead, they invested ways to save money by cutting resources. I am convinced the new Brunswick model was dropped once they realized it actually costs more than what they already had in place. The massive expansion of what they call autism units without any research into how they actually benefit children and using them. Nevermind the possible ethics of putting children into something called units and providing minimal support for them when they are enrolled. We also saw how the NCSE did everything they could to rid themselves of any responsibility to any individual child through the set allocation model and instead forced schools to perform the miracle of the loaves and fishes to resource children's needs with ever decreasing supports. When there plan to not have any details of children risked being upended by a court ruling, which would've seen them forced to identify the needs of children for the assessment of need. Aided by their friends and the department of education, as you heard, just there, the representative bodies, which we discussed in a previous episode on the unions, which we also discussed in a previous episode. They managed to wangle their way out when schools were gaslit into doing the work for them. In 2023, they, again, tried to pull the wall over school's eyes by removing the criteria for special allocation teaching hours after it was revealed that they couldn't get the data from the HSE. Uh, small uprising from parent groups, advocacy groups, and a few teachers was again, gotten over by the support of their friends. Most infamously from the IPN who told their own members how wrong they were. Those inventing a new educational term. Called quantum. Which as I found funny, could be defined as a unit of the smallest amount of something, usually energy. At the same time, the HSE failed to meet the needs of tens of thousands of children. When it came to speech and language, occupational therapy, mental health, psychology, psychiatry, and so on. And in many cases, the only service that was available to any child with additional needs was their school place. As you can see the link between the states treatment of women and children in the 20th century supported by an independent partner in the form of the Catholic church. And now the 21st century is treatment of children and their families. This time supported by an independent body. The NCSE the last decade to me is a dark mark on our education history. What's worse to me is that much like the crimes of the 20th century, what empowered the state and its partners for treating children in the way they did was compliance through silence. People that spoke up were often ridiculed. Isolated. Ignored. And told that they were the only ones complaining. And everyone. else was happy. However, despite the last decade, as I said, at the end of the last episode in 2024, the NCSE came out with a process which they called new for resourcing special needs assistance. Right now they're rolling out the red carpet for us explaining how it works. Perhaps we're about to see the seeds of hope for children with additional needs from the NCSE. I've reached the point of the podcast now, where I feel I need to offer some solutions. If you've listened to this show for a few years, you might remember an episode I did shortly after the newest CEO of the NCSE. John Carney took the reins of the NCSE. I given that I'm just big, loud mouth with a microphone and a few ideas. I don't expect anything I say to ever hit his desk. But for those of you that are interested. I'm going to give you an updated summary of those thoughts. I read back over my ideas. And to be honest, I now disagree with at least one thing I had argued for a couple of years ago. However, there's one idea. That I really liked. When I was discussing the, special education, teaching hours, the allocations, and it was during a conversation. I had on the radio with Karen Cudahy in Newstalk. Well to tell the truth. It came from the national principal's forum, in the first place, but Karen coulda, he made a really good analogy. It was a nice, simple idea. Which emerged after those set allocations? I just said, and 20, 23, and I had the job of speaking to Karen Cudahy on news. Talk about it. And he came up with the analogy that to me, made it make sense. To the man on the street. The national principal's forum recommended that rather having all the complicated, meaningless and an accurate algorithms that decided what special education resources to award to children in schools, the principals would simply out outline the supports they required for the school year on. These would be provided. They would do this on the system called pod, which is the primary online database. We do like our acronyms and whatever it was put in pod. That's what we would get. And Karen could, he asked me. Would it be similar to how people filed their tax returns? Um, that is one decides how much tax they declare. And if something looks a little bit fishy, Then it's investigated. And to me, it was a really good analogy. There are only 3000 primary schools in Ireland and we have lots of data on them already that is used for the allocations. Their size and their dash status are two indicators. Literacy and numeracy scores are terrible indicators, but I will concede that they also exist and they are the only other variables now used for allocating resources. The key variable missing are the actual needs of children in the school. The national principal's forum suggested. The principals would simply input what the children in the school need. Now, before you poopoo this idea and came, the principals would take the Mickey out of the whole thing and applied for ridiculous amounts of hours, way beyond what they need. Just hang on for a minute. And hear me out. I don't think a school principal should be expected to just pick a number out of the air and pop it in the system. The NCSE already has a system where a school inputs, the level of need of all children. When they're applying for a view of their resources, there would be nothing that difficult about using that documents to give a reasonable calculation of what hours each child's need equates to. They've had that they had that before 2017 and removed it. So let's say my current set allocation in my school is about 200 hours a week. That's go with $200 a week. It isn't my allocation. By the way, before you start going mad. And let's say I filled out the form on a calculated 205 hours, but I decided to apply for 250 hours a week for just for the crack. Well, that should raise alarm bells. If I applied for 250 hours, when I should, when the calculation said I should be a brown 205. And I should expect to have that evaluated and reviewed. The document could be used to calculate the allocation of SNS as well as this, with the same system. And in some ways it already does. If I need an extra SNA or two in my school, I have to seek review of my current resources. Ultimately the department and the NCSE has seven years of data on the Set allocations. So it would be extremely easy to get this system up and running. With only 3000 schools and over 200 people working in the NCSE. I think this could be managed very easily and very quickly. There were lots of advantages to this model. The main one is it takes a lot of bureaucracy out of the system. We don't need all those people sitting in their offices and they can now work directly with schools. It also would stop the crazy horrible system, which has been christened the cluster games by principals. This model would mean that schools would receive an allocation to the nearest full teacher and no more fractions of hours will be necessary. However that aside, I don't believe this model alone would fix special education. There's a reason why this model isn't already in place. And this is because we already know the state and the NCSE is not providing enough supports to children with additional needs. It is likely to cost the giving children, exactly what they need. We'll be more than double of what they're giving already. We need to look at ways to systematically alter the education system insofar as possible. So you're going to have to hear me at this one. Too, but I think we might have. Maybe too many teachers and SNS working in special education right now. Now, hopefully you haven't spelt your hot cup of coffee all over yourself. Hearing that did that big mouth Lewis, just say we've too many teachers and SNS after everything he said about not having enough supports in schools. Sorry for shouting. I'm getting onto myself. Anyway, let me reverse a little before I go on and get you back to your coffee. We probably don't have too many per se. But we have too many working in contexts that they shouldn't be. I believe we're actually missing another profession within our profession. Most developed countries have these as standard in their classrooms these days. And that position. Is the teaching assistant position or the TA, as it seems to be known in most other countries that have them. What is a teaching assistant you might ask. And how is it different to a special education teacher or a special needs assistant? Well, the teaching assistants is someone who is the second adult in a classroom. Who supports the teacher with all of the things that a PSAT or an SNA doesn't do. For example, a teaching assistant can sit with a group of children in the classroom and help at work. A teaching assistant can sit outside the classroom with a child who has maybe has some sensory needs and needs a little bit of time out of the classroom. A teaching assistant can cover the class for a very short time. If the teacher is on their break or is talking to a child that outside of the classroom or sorting out an incident that happened on yard, a teaching assistant can take care of display, work photocopying, and so on in a way they are the position that the SNA originally was a general second pair of hands in the classroom. The SNA position has become specialized on children's care needs. So we need the teaching assistant to look after the non-car needs of children. I feel so strongly about this, that if someone was to ask me the first thing I would do, if I were the minister of education, if I had a magic wand, Well, you know what? My first one would be to separate church and state, but my number two would actually be. A teaching assistant in every classroom. I really mean now my second thing that I would ask for, if I was a minister for education will be to have a teaching assistant in every classroom. The impact of a teaching assistant in every classroom, I would argue we'll do more for children with additional needs than any other measure, except of course, separation of church and state. But that is for another day. And honestly, I do believe the separation of church and state would have a massive impact on special education in Ireland. Anyway, having teaching assistants would allow special needs assistants, have the time to upskilled to be able to offer basic care services such as OT and SLT. I really realize this is in the plans for S and A's from the NCSE already, but I can't see where they will get the time to do these things. Without someone like a teaching assistant to take care of a lot of what used to be known as secondary care needs. You might think could be done. But I have another bit of secret sauce to not only pulling the NCS. I E out of the Meyer, this step will probably have a massive effect on the H S E. If you talk to most infant teachers in the last couple of years and ask them, what is the biggest issue you face? They will likely tell you one of two things. One is a huge speech and language issue. And the other is anxiety. And this is where wraparound services need to be on site. There are several countries where it is entirely normal to have an onsite psychologist in the school. I went to Finland last year and I went to a small school of around 200 pupils. They had a psychologist two days a week, shared the bigger school nearby of about 300 pupils who had the psychologist for the other three days. Most finished schools have full-time psychologists, social workers on nurses. And just in case you're rolling your eyes at the relieving. Even Scandinavian, loving that you seem to hear all about why is it always the Scandinavians? Get it rice. There are other places provinces in Spain and the Netherlands also have this as standard and actually sometimes better than Finland setup. Can you imagine the positive impact on Irish primary schools? If we had these now basic services, I think about all those pilots going on in certain counties, which simply need to be rolled out to all primary schools. I do understand that like Finland, we have a huge amount of small rural schools, but Finland managers very well with clusters of schools sharing these wraparound services. And if we had these people in our schools, I can guarantee you, you would see the waiting lists for therapies, counseling, psychiatry, dropping to manageable levels. Very quickly. I would argue we would sort had so many issues. We would end up saving more money than we currently spend dealing with the issues when children get older, such as the impact of early school, leaving, teenage mental health and so on. I think the NCSE could, uh, would be well capable of managing a system like this, the school inclusion model, which they were thinking of promoting a few years ago was something like this. Their therapies pilot was happening in Wicklow ankle dare until COVID times, and these were the, and this was the seeds of this idea. I'm not really suggesting anything particular wild here, anything I've said here, I think is pretty sensible and so much maybe conservative. However, at the moment, the NCSE isn't quite there yet. However, since the Starship recording this podcast, they look like they might be starting to sow the seeds. A few weeks ago, the NCSE published the revision of the guidelines for schools applying for an SNA review. And to be honest. It's not that it's very different to what was there before. In fact, it's not very different at all. But it's how it's being rolled out. Isn't really that bad. And I was very, very early days, but if this is the beginning of things to come, it is possible that the scandal of the last gate decade may be on its way to being fixed. Of course, there is a very long way to go on the NCSE structures are still quite fractious. For example, if you're applying for SCT supports and SNA supports, you have to deal more or less with two completely different sections of the NCSE who won't know a single thing about each other. They need to untangle the layers of bureaucracy that they built over the last decade with all of the office staffs. I get them out front facing around the country. However, these already signs do look slightly positive. The question is how long will it take for the unraveling and rebuilding to take to happen? This episode is going out just before the 20, 24 general that action and whatever party is in charge of education and whatever minister falls into the role. I was special education. If this continues to exist, I hope it is a row that is taken very seriously with a decent minister who genuinely cares for children with additional needs. I would hate for it to be given to someone who sees it as simply a platform for a sexier portfolio. I believe the minister who manages to fix special education will be held with the same celebrations as we do for the likes of dun MRT. You brought in free second level education in the 1960s. He is still widely considered to be the best minister for education in the history of the state. So the question for the next minister for education is will they do a donor? Or will they like so many before them stick with the compliance of silence and the destruction of soundbites. As for the NCRC, after a decade of error, parable damage that was done to children and those working with them will the seeds, they just planted continue to grow. There's so many people I'd like to thank for their support in writing this series. And it's probably appropriate. If not disappointingly predictable. That I can't tell you their names. The people that contacted me, contacted me anonymously. I just fear for what might happen if they went public. And in some ways for this series, I was simply the messenger. The onshore.net podcast is written and produced by me, Simon Lewis. If you'd like to hear more of my thoughts on primary education in Ireland, you should subscribe to my maiden mist on Shaw dot Nash slash subscribe. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please consider reviewing it on your favorite podcast player, as it will help other people find it more easily. Until next time. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you again soon.