Gavan Reilly: SNA cutbacks are callous but they should surprise no one

Readers will know my personal interest in the State’s catering to childhood disabilities, and frankly, how bad a job the State generally does. I’m not sure if I’ve ever added it here but my wife is a primary teacher and given her dual interests, is more keenly aware of policy changes coming down the line when it comes to special education.

So when emails started landing with schools in the last week, informing them of pretty significant cutbacks to the number of SNAs they will have assigned to them next year, my wife was one of the few who wasn’t surprised by the news - disgusted, yes; shocked, absolutely not. This should all have been seen coming.

Even the mystified politicians didn’t seem to realise that what’s been happening now is the natural outcome of policy written in black and white in November 2024.

When the National Council for Special Education published its latest ‘toolkit’ for SNA deployment, it didn’t just specifically outline what SNAs are for – it also explicitly outlines what they are not for.

And what they are not for, it turns out, is much of the stuff for which many children have become utterly (and justifiably so) dependant on. Movement breaks, for children whose brains just frazzle out if they’re asked to sit for long periods at a time. Slowly repeated commands, for those who cannot keep up with the pace of a teacher’s instructions. Reminders to some children, with intellectual disabilities, that they need to eat or go to the toilet. Even children who can keep up with their lessons, but cannot communicate in traditional ways, “officially” do not warrant the help of an SNA.

Some might read this and think it’s a 21st century faff, and that these kids would be better served if they were told simply to buckle down and get on with things as their predecessors did.

But the truth, as any teacher or SEN parent will tell you, is that these things are necessary in a modern classroom. Forcing children with different learning styles into the same teaching mould simply doesn’t work. Generations of children were bludgeoned into stuff that doesn’t work for them – the educational equivalent of square pegs into round holes – and never reached their potential.

It might have been by stealth, over a decade, but SNAs took on this indispensable role of preparing their children to be taught by the teacher. Without that help, whether it was formally envisaged by the policy or not, their learning outcomes – and those of the class as a whole – are limited. Teachers won’t have the bandwidth to address the additional needs of children slipping back, for fear of leaving the rest of the class abandoned; nor will they have the scope to offer extra guidance to the gifted child itching for more challenges.

But it had all been there, in black and white, for over a year. Nobody should have been surprised at which was coming to pass – including the Minister for Education who has now paused it, or the Minister for Special Education who had previously insisted that the NCSE document wouldn’t change a thing.