OPINION: Phasing out special education is hoodwinking parents

Fifty years ago, Mayo set the example for the country when the first special school for ‘mildly handicapped children’, in the terminology of the day, was opened in Castlebar. St Anthony’s school was opened with a staff of four teachers and with 18 pupils drawn from across the county.
Four years later, in 1971, the body now known as Western Care opened St Brid’s, built to cater for ‘moderately handicapped children’.
Both of these initiatives were achieved against the odds, and were due to the dedication and idealism of the founding trio of Michael J Egan, Johnny Mee and Tom Fallon.
It is difficult, at this remove, to imagine the resistance and, indeed, official indifference there was to the concept of providing a formal education for children who did not conform to the mainstream. One of the more harsh pronouncements was that of a prominent local religious pastor, who, advising the founders of the futility of their cause, advised them that ‘such children were ineducable’.
The foundation of the Mayo special schools, and of the 134 such schools now part of the education system, came about simply because mainstream schools had neither the expertise or resources to cater for children who were somewhat outside the norm. It was the realisation that disabled children needed resources and supports that were not to be found in the mainstream system.
Special schools were set up not out of choice, but of necessity, and if the structure of education had been sufficiently inclusive in the first place, there would have been no need for the parallel stream of primary education. But thanks to that system, thousands of children who would otherwise have been consigned to neglect had their lives enriched and their potential developed beyond what was ever thought possible.
Now, more recently, in what could lead to a mirror situation of that which prevailed up to the 1960s, the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) has recommended that all students with special needs should in future be educated in mainstream schools. The aim, according to the council, is that special education should be phased out and that, in the interests of inclusivity, we should revert to where mainstream schools will again be the sole providers of primary education.
Nobody doubts that, in an ideal world, all children should go through the same school gates, share the same playground, and be part of the same school community. But those best placed to know the reality – and most of all, the parents involved – know how impractical that scenario would be, given the present stretched state of school supports and services.
To claim, as the NCSE seems to does, that disabled children can be absorbed into the mainstream system simply on the grounds of equity and inclusivity is to ignore the complexities of what so many families contend with on a daily basis.
There are many who suspect that the NCSE recommendation may have its roots in the belief that sending all children to the local school, regardless of needs, would be less costly in the long run. How else, it is asked, to explain the policy U-turn from what had, over four decades, seen substantial (and merited) investment in special education to now being overturned in the name of inclusivity ?
For anyone remotely connected with the structure of primary education – teachers, school boards, managers, principals – the notion that the funding required to meet the NCSE aim will be somehow provided by the exchequer is a deceit. There is not the faintest hope that the specialist supports – the SNAs, the occupational therapists, the psychologists, the speech therapists, the specially trained teachers – will be made available.
And to offer the false promise that special education will be phased out in favour of suitable mainstream schooling to hoodwink parents who deserve better.