| Article Index |
|---|
| Special education |
| Associate Minister's address to the Auckland Disability Law Workshop |
| PPTA position |
| All Pages |
Background
Special Education 2000 introduced significantly different new resourcing models for special needs students. The policy implementation was described at the time as ‘back-filling’ as the practical details of the operation of the theoretical model was often seemingly made up (and then redesigned, and modified to try to make it work in the real world of the secondary school) as the policy rolled out.
There was a review of SE 2000 early in its implementation. There have been subsequent tweaks to the policy and legal challenges to it by special needs advocacy groups since then.
IHC has launched a further challenge to Special Education 2000 with the Human Rights Commission on the basis that the implementation of the policy is discriminatory in effect.
Current Issues
The Association called together a group of Special Education Coordinators from a representative group of schools in 2008 and asked them to identify how the current special needs resourcing failed to address the stated aims of SE 2000. Their report, A report on special education resourcing, identifies twelve general areas in which SE2000 is failing to address the needs of special education students. These are:
- The inadequacy of the ORRS funding
- Underfunding of Teacher Aides and lack of career pathways and professional support for these people
- An unrealistic mainstreaming philosophy driving the policy work
- Too few students being verified for ORRS and concerns about the process of verification
- Lack of support for students in their transition from school to beyond school
- A lack of recognition of moderate needs and poorly targeted resourcing for this group
- Poor inter-agency co-ordination and difficulty accessing specialists/therapists in a timely or nationally consistent manner
- Inadequate recognition of the costs of travel for special needs students
- Inadequacies in the Resource Teacher: Learning and Behaviour (RTLB) model for secondary
- Difficulties accessing, and variability in, specialist/therapy support
- Failure to recognise condition-related behaviour in special needs student funding
- The lack of special needs components in teacher education
The group also identified the failure of governments and the Ministry of Education to act on the recommendations of previous reports as a concern.
The report identifies a number of specific solutions to the problems experienced by secondary schools and secondary school students with special needs.
Recommendations to Government
- That the concerns outlined above be addressed with urgency.
- That schools that wish to establish permanent special needs centres be supported to do so.
- That every school be resourced at 0.4 Full Time Teacher Equivalent (FTTE) for a special needs coordinator.
- That the per-student Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Scheme (ORRS) resourcing be significantly increased.
- That the number of students who can be eligible for ORRS funding be increased to 3% of students.
- That there be an independent review of the effectiveness of SE2000 which includes advice on improvements to the system to effectively meet the needs of special needs students and of the support needed by secondary schools to meet those needs.
- That a moderate needs definition be agreed and used to allocate Special Education Grant funding and RTLB staffing.
- That a significant training and recruitment programme be undertaken to ensure that all schools have timely access to an adequate supply of specialist support professionals/therapists in all special needs areas.
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