Government Learning Resource Changes a Race to the Bottom:
Labour/Fine Gael and the Minister for Education are all trying to pull the wool over the eyes of parents of children with special education needs in Dublin West. Our local Ministers and government representatives have allowed this potentially catastrophic change to occur.
The Minister’s proposed new system for allocating Learning Supports and Resource Teaching will no longer be based on the professionally assessed special education needs of children in the school but on a myriad mix that is going to be based on the socio-demographic characteristics of a school’s catchment area and standardised tests.
This new system of allocating teaching resources will deprive children with assessed special education needs of essential education supports. Learning Supports and Resource Teaching allocations should be based on individual pupils’ needs, not the characteristics of the geographical area in which their
school is located.

Should this system be introduced next year, as the Minister is proposing, many schools in Dublin West will face major reductions and pupils with existing learning supports will have to do without.
This is a senseless system, with no link to pupils’ actual needs. The medical equivalent would be if access to care was determined by where an individual is from, rather than on their clinical need.
The system should be reformed by raising the boat for all, not by ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ as is being proposed with this new senseless system.
The Minister should put resources in place to reduce waiting times for public assessment, with priority given to schools in disadvantaged areas, and put in place sufficient numbers of resource teachers as dictated by the level of need.