Special-needs students must have a solution – and parents deserve some clarity
THEY are at their wits’ end. Worn out, exasperated and disappointed. Expectations raised only to be dashed. Parents of children with special educational needs have been squeezed through the wringer in recent days. Just open the special schools and special classes within mainstream schools, they are pleading – give our children the structures and supports they need.
These mothers and fathers are not looking to schools for childcare – for a respite from home-schooling, as some suggest. They have legitimate anxieties about interruptions to their children’s learning, with the collapse in continuity leading to development regression in a number of cases. A Zoom lesson is no substitute for a child with a short attention span – his or her concentration levels can’t cope with distance learning.
However, many teachers and special needs assistants are convinced it’s unsafe to return to school settings because of high community transmission rates. Indeed, the zero-risk public setting does not exist.
We are in the grip of an unprecedented public health situation, with our hospitals under intense pressure. Covid-19 is now rampant in the community, and quickly mutating variants are proving particularly deadly. While daily cases are falling, they remain stubbornly high.
Teachers aren’t being awkward for the sake of it. In mainstream and special schools alike, they want to give their pupils all the help they can. The idea of children being deprived of their needs is a difficult one for anybody to accept.
But the reality is that what occurs in the community is reflected in the schools. And in the community, each of us has been advised to behave as though everyone we meet is a potential Covid carrier.
Yesterday, the HSE’s chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry expressed the view that transmission rates remained too steep for schools to reopen. But, speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, he said “priority status” should be given to some elements of education. Pupils with additional needs certainly deserve to be included here.
A workaround must be found between the Department of Education, which will struggle to reopen mainstream schools before Easter if it can’t make arrangements for special schools, and the unions whose job it is to put their members’ interests first.
There is merit in the argument from the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation that a substantial number of school-age children have tested positive for the coronavirus. That said, families of children with special needs are more cocooned than others and less likely to be exposed.
In a nutshell, it’s a case of on the one hand and on the other. Conflicting needs. Compelling concerns on both sides.
Special needs children do require intense, constant care, and the dilemma boils down to safety in the workplace versus what’s best educationally for this important cohort of children.
It shouldn’t be this way but the dispute unfortunately ranges vulnerable kids and their parents against special education teachers, assistants and their unions. The Department of Education could have handled discussions better and worked harder at offering reassurances.
The Government must provide clarity. Make a plan and stand over it. Getting children with additional needs back to the classroom should be an urgent target – but it has to be done safely.
Trust matters here and trust is damaged. The Government says schools are safe but staff are unconvinced. They listen to news bulletins reporting high infection rates, new and more contagious Covid variants.
Schools may not amplify the transmission but they certainly reflect it. The majority of infections in the Republic are the new and more infectious UK strain, underlining how ineffective the two-island approach to a public health emergency has proved.
Some teachers share their homes with people in at-risk groups. They feel they cannot expose them to danger, not least because vaccine roll-out is happening slowly with puzzling authorisation delays in the European Medicines Agency.
There was a perception teachers were frontline workers. And for a time they were. Along with healthcare, supermarket and transport staff, politicians, some media and essential retailers, teachers went to work during the pandemic. When schools shut, they taught via Zoom, a useful stopgap but far from ideal.
With transmission levels 10 times higher than during the previous lockdown and our hospitals at surge capacity, most people accept it makes sense for mainstream schooling to move online. Every time a health chief speaks in public it is to warn against unnecessary journeys, and closing schools reduces the movement of people.
But a case can be made for special needs pupils unable to manage with distance learning, who are missing out to a greater extent than other children. They form such a tiny percentage of the school-going population they pose a marginal risk.
Some classes would have only three or four pupils in them, which lends itself to social distancing. Could arrangements be made for one-on-one teaching in special education settings? Let’s have flexibility to devise a plan that overcomes the impasse.
Teachers aren’t the only ones with a part to play here. They would also feel reassured about going into classroom settings if the State got back up to speed on virus testing and contact tracing.
But it’s worth noting special needs pupils and the children of frontline workers are accommodated in schools north of the Border – my brother is a caretaker in one, his working hours halved, but the students who most need to be there are in the classroom five days a week.
Meanwhile, creches in the Republic are open for the children of essential workers. If a creche is deemed safe, why not a school?
There has been some discussion about leaving school reopening in the hands of individual boards of management. Some fear this could foster division. Equally, it could be a positive step: seeing schools open safely, meeting pupils’ needs, might encourage the more reluctant schools to unlock their gates.
Contradictory messaging continues to be a problem with this Government. Its policy reversals mount up – backtracking over returning special needs pupils to the classroom is only the latest example.
During a pandemic, any administration needs flexibility in decision-making.
But a pattern of U-turns is problematic: any announcement currently is greeted with some scepticism.
Parents of special needs children deserve clarity. If community transmission levels are the issue, then agree their schools will reopen when the infection rate is below 1 – or which ever figure is recommended by public health doctors. Until then, offer these families additional supports at home.
Finally, while teachers’ safety concerns are valid, it’s curious to see their safety generate more attention than a supermarket worker’s.
Some classes would have only three or four pupils in them, which lends itself to social distancing