“Fight,” “battle” and “struggle” were among the words parents of children with additional needs used when describing what it was like trying to get a place in a special class or school in Ireland this year.
A review of the Education of Persons with Special Educational Needs (EPSEN) Act 2004, published by the Department of Education earlier this year, heard from parents who were also angry at how long it took to get an assessment of need (AoN) for their child.
The parents thought these assessments were “crucial” for understanding what kind of support and interventions their children might need – in other words, if they needed to attend a special class or school. Depending on the age of the child, being able to access special education can often change their life for the better. Being denied it can erode a child’s quality of life.
For the last two months, parents across the country will have been scrambling to find a place in a special school in advance of the 2026 academic year.
RM Block
It remains a fact that when other children are posing in their school uniforms for proud parents next September, some five-year-old girls and boys will simply have to stay at home because there is no place available for them.
Families that have finally got an AoN for their child face the prospect of paying for one again after two years, when it is deemed out of date.
Next year, however, parents applying for special schools will be told they no longer need an AoN in order to access special education for the 2027 academic year. While the Government has not yet released the full details of how this big reform will work, it has said that new “educational” assessments, rather than reports from psychologists, will be relied upon to determine what additional needs a child has.
The reason the Government is doing this is because it believes that some people have been seeking AoNs for children who do not need them. The waiting list for AoNs is due to reach 22,000 by the end of this year. An average AoN can take 30 hours and therapists have complained of the moral quandary of spending a third of their time on the reports rather than offering therapies to disabled children languishing on long HSE waiting lists.
The Department of Children previously told The Irish Times it was concerned about “misinformation or misunderstanding” about the purpose of an AoN. It suggested that some parents seemed to believe they needed an AoN to “bolster or enhance applications for other Government services and supports.”
“For example, there is no requirement for an AoN to access health services,” the Department had said. Other Government departments had also been asked to review their schemes, to see if they were “inadvertently” encouraging people to apply for an AoN they did not need. According to the Department of Children, “it should not be the case that a person feels they need an Assessment of Need to access a service or support to which they may already be entitled.”
The Department of Children also pointed out that “there is nothing within the Disability Act” setting out that a child requires an AoN before they can access special education. There is case law from 2021, however, which says that the opposite is true: that the education system is required to contribute to AoNs by assessing a child’s educational needs.
According to the National Council for Special Education (NCSE), a child does need a “professional report” which identifies that they do have a special educational need, before they can be placed in a special class or a special school. While the Government believes that an AoN is one way of identifying children who have a special educational need, this policy change clearly indicates that the Government no longer thinks that the AoN should be the only way.
But the policy shift is already causing consternation among special schools, confused about what this will mean for their admissions policies.
In particular, mild special schools – for children with mild general learning disabilities as opposed to moderate or severe – fear this could pose an existential threat to them.
Debbie O’Neill, principal of Scoil Eoin in Crumlin and a member of the Mild General Learning Disabilities (MGLD) Principals Group, explained her fear that without a professional report stating a child needs to be in a special school, children who previously would have been admitted to one like hers will end up having to stay in mainstream education. “Who is going to be the gatekeeper of special education?” Ms O’Neill said.
