Mar 16, 2025, RTE: School place supposed to be a 'constitutional right'
"We shouldn't be going through this. It’s supposed to be a constitutional right."
Tara McAuley Ryan has applied to more than 20 schools across Dublin for a place for her five-year-old son Reign. Most have said there is no place for him, while others say he does not meet their criteria.
Reign has Autism, ADHD and Pathological Demand Avoidance, or PDA.
He currently attends a mainstream school, having only gotten a diagnosis last May - when he already had a school place for September.
Tara says they had no choice but to send Reign to the mainstream school as they did not know he would need a special school or ASD (autism spectrum disorder) class.
She says that after almost a year of school, they have had "nothing but problems".
Tara says Reign has overwhelming anxiety in school.
"You can’t really put demands on him. If he’s not into it he won’t do it, he’ll go off the handle if he’s put under pressure."
The five-year-old has been repeatedly suspended from school.
Tara says she gets calls from the school almost daily and Reign has now been placed on a reduced timetable of two hours each morning.
"In a nice way, they’ve tried to tell us they don’t have the resources to keep him for the full day."
Reign is in a room on his own with the teacher and SNA, which she feels is not good for her son.
Tara says she is under enormous pressure to pull her son out of the mainstream school and place him in one that can facilitate him better, i.e. get a place in a special school or a school with a designated special class. But that is no easy task.
On 28 February, dozens of parents, including Tara, camped outside the Department of Education overnight to protest over the lack of suitable school places for children with special educational needs.
Tara has also joined with other parents in the north inner city of Dublin to press politicians for school places for their children.
One parent spoke about applying to 49 schools, only to be refused 48 times.
The group has pledged to continue to lobby the Government to address their concerns, with the support of local Opposition TDs.
Struggles for supports for children with autism are nothing new but have been making headlines again recently, when it emerged that the rate of autism had increased threefold in the last decade or so.
A spokesperson for the Department of Education said: "It is important to note that, while there has been a significant rise in the number of children and young people diagnosed as autistic, not all of these children or young people require specialist intervention. . . .
These special classes are being delivered in increasing numbers in recent years, but there is demand for more.
It is also interesting to note that while the Department of Education used to rely on an autism prevalence rate of 1.5%, it says the figure of 5% or one in 20 children is more accurate.
In February, Sinn Féin introduced a private members' motion calling on the Government to immediately expand the number of special school places, special classes and special education teaching hours across the State, again highlighting the fact that 126 children with additional needs were left without a place last September.
In early March, Labour and the Social Democrats raised the issue of children with additional needs who don’t have a school place for next year at Leaders' Questions.
Micheál Martin said: "Funding is not an issue here."
The Taoiseach expressed his sympathy for parents and families, and said he was determined to deal with the issue in the short term.
He pointed to the growth in population and the number of children with special needs, but said that 11 special schools had been opened in the last five years.
"Funding has significantly increased. The number of additional places, teachers and SNAs has increased dramatically. That is no comfort or consolation to those parents who do not have a place or access to services, but it needs to be said."
400 special classes have been promised by the Government for the next school year, but People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy doubts they will all be open by September.
As of 14 March, the Department of Education said that the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) has sanctioned 309 new special classes.
So far, so good, but the devil is in the detail.
In the wake of the parents' sleep out, Mr Murphy said: "I have correspondence with multiple schools saying these classes effectively do not exist. One school said they were in discussions with the NCSE about the establishment of a special class but as it stands, they had received no support to make it happen."
RTÉ spoke to a school principal in the south of the country who said the school recognised the need for a special class in the area, and indeed in their school, but needed help to open it.
They said nobody had contacted them about the required modifications to the school to open a special class, and they expressed their frustration that the NCSE had made the announcement, saying it was unfair on parents.
They said they had received more than 20 applications already, without being certain that they would be able to open the special class come September.
In correspondence with parents, the school said: "The school requested that no announcement be made about a special class until there was certainty about a realistic establishment date. We have expressed our disappointment to the NCSE about this announcement as it was grossly unfair to the school but, most importantly, to parents and children who are so frustrated by their search for a suitable school place."
Minister of State at the Department of Education, Michael Moynihan, said the NCSE was liaising with school, saying "there’s huge engagement with school authorities" [about special classes].
When the complaint by the principal in the south of the country was put to him, he said he would follow up on the matter with the NCSE as a matter of priority to ensure that every school would be liaised with.
Minister Moynihan said: "Where schools have been identified as places where we’ll open additional classes, there are funds immediately available for remedial works."
He said where modular units were required to house special classes, they were being prioritised for September.
Asked about the multiple refusals parents reported, Mr Moynihan said the NCSE and the Department of Education would have to work very hard over the coming weeks to ensure that parents were helped.
He said he recognised the huge stress families were under and said that 120 Special Educational Needs Officers (SENOs) were working in the field to help them find a place.
He said he hoped a centralised application system would be in place by 2026 to end the practise of families having to apply to multiple schools.
"Today or tomorrow, children will be born with additional needs, and we have to have a system prepared to make sure that families don’t have that uncertainty."
"We need better solutions," he said.
The Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland, ASTI, believes that schools are being asked to do the impossible.
ASTI Deputy General Secretary Diarmaid de Paor said: "You cannot run a system where you make announcements about schools until those places are available, properly resourced, built and have the teachers in place.. . .
He said children with SEN are "very welcome, but we need proper training".
"About 20-30% have specialist training, but that leaves 70% without training."
For its part, the Irish National Teachers Organisation believes the classes will be open by September.
INTO General Secretary John Boyle said: "There’s still six months to the new school year opening. When you look at the huge increase - we’d still be confident that the children who need the places would get the places."
He also said the huge rise in the number of children with an autism diagnosis meant planning was challenging.
"I don’t think anybody in primary or post-primary was able to pre-plan for that significant increase in the numbers diagnosed," added Mr Boyle.
Comments