1,200 special needs posts face axe [npc.ie]
- Published: 31 July 2009
ALMOST 1,200 special needs assistants could lose their jobs in the next school year, based on preliminary figures from a review of 10,500 existing posts.
The National Council for Special Education (NCSE) has reviewed the allocation of special needs assistants (SNAs) in almost one-in-four of the country's 3,900 schools since they re-opened after Easter.
The aim is to determine whether all SNA posts are justified, given the changing needs of some children they may be working with. The posts are sanctioned for children with disabilities who have special care needs, such as the need for help writing down homework.
An Bord Snip Nua has suggested that up to€60 million a year could be saved if their numbers were cut by 2,000. The recommendation was based on claims that some schools keep SNAs after the children to whom they were allocated leave, but the SNAs' main union IMPACT says this is an urban myth.
The Department of Education is also already carrying out a value-for-money audit of the service, which will cost €350m this year.
The NCSE review, due by the end of the year, is taking account of how many SNAs are likely to be needed for new children entering schools in September and the numbers no longer required for pupils who left school this summer.
But with those two figures almost matching each other every year, the proposed reductions arising from the review to date give an indication of the number of SNAs which the NCSE's special educational needs organisers (SENOs) consider are no longer needed because children's special care needs have diminished.
The review will resume in September but it has already suggested there should be 195 fewer SNAs working at the 647 primary schools visited so far. Applying these figures to all 3,160 mainstream primary schools, 952 less SNA posts would be sanctioned from next February, when any reductions arising from the review must be imposed.
At second level, 251 of the country's 730 schools have been reviewed, with the NCSE recommending 73 fewer posts be sanctioned. This suggests around 212 fewer SNA jobs across the second-level sector.
The combined estimate of a cut of 1,164 SNAs represents just over one-in-10 of these posts but IMPACT assistant general secretary Philip Mullen said it is likely to ballot SNAs for industrial action in September.
"The number of SNAs in our schools is based on assessments by the same organisation, it seems the only thing that has changed is that someone at a political level is looking to save money," he said.
"The recent letter from the Department of Education to tell schools they can keep existing SNA levels until the end of January is highly suspicious, designed to hide cuts when various other measures in the budget will be taking effect."
