No child should be left behind - Labour motion to tackle school places - The Labour Party
Under Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, 126 children with special educational needs had no place at the start of this school year in September.
This is in the context of 14,221 children overdue an assessment of needs in December 2024, nearly 13,000 children waiting for initial contact with a Children’s Disability Network Team, and tens of thousands of children on primary care wait lists for treatment, adding further pressure on schools and educators to support children with additional unmet needs.
Publishing the motion, Labour education spokesperson Eoghan Kenny TD said:
No child should be left behind, yet under Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil we have become a country of waiting lists. Across the country, families of children with additional educational needs are facing unacceptable levels of uncertainty.
How we treat our children is a marker for what type of society we exist in, and Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have consistently failed to vindicate the basic rights of all children.
Tomorrow morning in the Dáil we will demand political action and leadership for the hundreds of children and their parents impacted by this Government’s failure to properly plan for the needs of our education system.
Labour are calling on the government to:
- ensure the right of every child to an appropriate school place in their general locality is fulfilled in September 2025;
- introduce a central application system for special educational places to commence for the 2026/27 school year, and develop protocols on the sharing of information at every step of the educational system;
- provide appropriate means of transport for children with additional educational needs to access their school place;
- guarantee that every school will receive sufficient funding for the full equipping of classrooms including modular builds, sensory and play spaces, and assistive technology when new special classes are opened;
- publish the finalised review of the EPSEN Act and commit to bringing forward amending proposals as necessary and to commencing the long delayed measures;
- provide a timeline for the national rollout of in-school therapists through the ETSS to provide certainty for schools and parents, and introduce play, art, music and other relevant therapies and in-school counselling where appropriate;
- lift the arbitrary cap on SNAs, and ensure that positions are funded when the NCSE has recommended a post is required, remove the 72 hour obligation on SNAs, and continue to support the professionalisation of the SNA role;
- introduce an initial teacher education programme for student teachers allowing them to complete at least one school placement in an additional needs setting, and introduce free upskilling in SEN for existing teachers;
- ensure every teacher is fully trained in seizure first aid, amend the assault leave scheme, and develop a new position in schools of a Special Education Needs Officer.