The abrupt pulling of the handbrake on reviews of allocations of special needs assistants (SNAs) to schools around the country has – for now at least – quelled unrest that was rapidly becoming politically intolerable.
Growing pressure meant the issue was brought up to the level of party leaders – the net effect being that the reviews were paused, despite Minister for Education Hildegarde Naughton suggesting they would proceed as recently as Monday.
Part of the issue is the rapid growth in the need for SNAs within the education system. Increased diagnoses of autism, dyspraxia and ADHD among other conditions have driven the rise.
Historically, an SNA was assigned to one or two students within a school. But, as time went on, an individual SNA’s duties may have drifted from their original assignment, says Fórsa head of education Andy Pike, especially as the children to whom they were initially assigned move through, or out of, a particular school. “When that SNA is left behind, there’s plenty of work for them to do,” he says. “There are so many kids with challenging behaviours needing emotional support – the role is much wider than simply taking a child to the toilet.”
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So it seems there was a situation where school principals could deploy SNAs with more flexibility or, as Pike puts it, “spread the resource that was there more thinly”.
This comes against the backdrop of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform harrying every department to keep within its budget – the Department of Education alone needed a bailout of €567 million last year. The hiring of staff was a big bone of contention between the two departments in pre-budget wrangling last year.
It was brought to a head, seemingly, by the reviews of individual schools being undertaken by the National Council for Special Education this year. There are plans to undertake 1,000 this year.
While two-thirds of the 584 done so far will see the school with the same number of SNAs or an increased allocation, a third were getting bad news. The scale of this (“shock and awe”, in the words of one Government figure) made this a politically pressing problem as affected schools petitioned their TDs.
One of many examples in recent days came from Cormac Devlin, a Fianna Fáil TD for Dún Laoghaire. Our Lady of Good Counsel Boys National School in Johnstown was told that its SNA allocation was being cut from nine to 3.83. Devlin raised the school’s plight with his party leader, Taoiseach Micheál Martin, in the Dáil on Tuesday.
There is the question of what comes next. The pause in reviews means the controversy may temporarily dissipate but schools which have been told of a cut are left in limbo. Naughton has urged them to use internal review mechanisms to appeal the outcome if they are unhappy, but there is pressure on the Coalition (including from backbenchers such as Devlin) to clarify the next steps.
“Those schools that had drastic changes proposed, they need to have clarity on when they’re going to get the new revised figures for their allocation and that needs to happen ASAP,” he says, adding: “We need to get clarity on this from the Minister herself.”
Unions want clarity, too, on how exactly a redeployment scheme for SNAs working in affected schools will function.
The Government has bought itself time with the pause, during which it will try to soothe tensions with a round of explanation and consultation. But it has also proved a sharp reminder of one of the hard borders of Irish politics – that there are few things trickier than taking something away.
Any rapid escalation to a boiling point may reduce the Coalition’s future room for manoeuvre on this issue.
