An autism class opens. What happens then?

Páiric Clerkin, chief executive of the Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN) accused Madigan of looking for a ‘quick fix,’ arguing that two months is simply not enough time to adequately prepare a classroom for children with autism.

Josepha Madigan announced this week that 383 new special classes will open this year. The minister said her “number one priority as Minister of State with responsibility for Special Education has been to ensure that every child in this country has access to a school place". 

However, one group of parents argues that standards are not consistent enough across schools once these classrooms open and school places are provided. 

Their story points to a gross negligence in the system, characterised by surface-level supports.

Sandra had two boys in the autism class. Arriving to the school, one of her sons was non-verbal; he had been trained to communicate using the picture exchange communication system (PECS).

“From day one it was all wrong. They wouldn’t use his PECS book which had been his way to communicate. The Special Needs Assistants (SNA) were holding their hands. But that wasn’t in their assessment of need. They were fully capable of walking around themselves. 

"When I asked the SNA to stop, I got a letter telling me that I wasn’t allowed communicate with them directly.” Both sons went downhill quickly, Sandra reports.

My non-verbal child had been doing so well up until then. He started wetting and soiling his pants and refused to eat. He was lashing out.

She believes this was a direct result of poor staff knowledge, attitude and training.

“They didn’t know what they were doing. For example, they were using ear defenders on all children in the class. They were all out in the playground wearing them. These were not in my child’s plan, and I requested they not be used but it kept happening. 

"Conversely my son was prescribed glasses with prisms to be worn only 20 minutes a day. I discovered that they were putting them on him all day long.” Her son lost his PECS skills. She was also upset to learn that her son had been placed in a personalised sensory space without her permission.

The sensory space, made by a private company, provides personalised sessions for children with sensory needs. The company employs occupational therapists who work with the school to agree a tailored plan for each child. They confirm that they had not made a personalised plan for Sandra’s son.

Sandra believes this had a significant impact on her son. “He was running up and down the corridors, hopping off the walls. He jumped off the school wall into the car park. He couldn’t sleep and was soiling himself. 

"Then I got a call from the occupational therapist who had been visiting the school. They had been putting my son in at an alerting setting, using the product without a personalised plan, totally against his care needs.” 

The CEO of the company carried out extensive research in approximately 60 Irish schools before creating his product. His research tells its own story about the lived experience of children with additional needs in Irish schools.

“Autism supports can’t work in a one size fits all environment. I was alarmed to discover that children with additional needs were losing up to two hours of class time and were often being sent home. They were also being put into generic sensory rooms for far too long.

“I spent a lot of time on the wrong side of the classroom door, and I didn’t want that to happen to my children. Our product, informed by occupational therapists and academic research, reduces this time to 10 minutes on average.” 

As a parent of neurodiverse children, he feels that parental involvement is key.

“My children’s school send us a consent slip to use the product I designed every year. Myself and my wife want this product to be very parent friendly; that’s where we’re coming from.” He adds that schools need more support when it comes to working with children with additional needs.

Children in primary schools should not be using our product without their own programme. Our product won’t work for everyone, but it is working very well in various settings. 

"Schools might not see an occupational therapist from one end of the year to the next. Schools are working hard without an adequate number of staff or, in some cases, an adequate level of training.” 

Mary’s son was in the school for two years before he left.

“The first day, we weren’t allowed travel with him in the bus. There were three adults he didn’t know in there. My child was five years old and non-verbal. It must have been terrifying for him. Before he went into that school, he never had any behavioural problems. He had been using PECS but he lost the skill and what few words he had.

“He came home in different clothes one day because he’d had an accident. That had never happened before. 

He had been shouting and pointing at the door to go to the toilet. The door of the classroom was locked, and he didn’t have access to his PECS book to communicate with them.

Mary had the same concern as Sandra with the use of ear defenders and instructed the school not to use them. They continued to do so.

“One day he came home with his face all bruised, his lip bleeding, and nobody in the school told us anything. He started to become afraid of people he knew like my mother. I was getting constant calls to collect him because of his behaviour. It came to a head one day when I collected him and he was just out of it, distraught, and screaming.”

Gemma’s son is still in the school but is wholly unhappy with the care her son receives.

He has a diagnosis of ADHD. Initially Gemma wasn’t told that he was attending the autism classroom. In the mainstream classroom he sits in a seat surrounded by red tape on the floor, to remind him to stay where he is. There is also a red line leading him to the toilet.

“My son has been suspended for bad behaviour, but he was locked into a room while the other kids were out playing. Restricting time in the yard is the opposite of what he needs to regulate himself.” 

Gemma has an SNA qualification so is aware of what is needed to avoid incidents.

“The school lies about the supports being offered. I have asked them what support plans are in place. I’ve asked them for reports on his episodes. 

All I get are negative comments in a communication book, something they developed to stop us speaking with staff directly. I was even told that the school is not a place for my son.

Gemma was asked to pick her son up from school on a regular basis. She had to change her work arrangements to manage it. She gave permission for the sensory space but doesn’t believe his OT report was reflected accurately in the questionnaire filled out by the school.

Gemma said it was especially difficult as the SNA had a close relationship with a member of the board.

Like Sandra and Mary, Catherine has removed her two sons from the school. “One son got suspended for cumulative behavioural issues a day or so after we sent a detailed letter of complaint to the Board of Management.” 

 She describes a continuous lack of understanding of her son and his needs. “There was an incident where he urinated in school. This isn’t something he had ever done elsewhere. It was no time before he got a suspension. When he returned to school the Special Education Teacher (SET) and the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) teacher gave no support to him and stood like guard dogs at the gate and refused to help him back to the classroom. 

"The day he urinated I went in to get him. The special education teacher (SET) rolled her eyes when I questioned what they were doing in the school to leave my child in this state. I had to ask her not to; it was very unprofessional.

“They have no understanding of triggers and how to manage them, no training. 

I witnessed an SNA holding a door closed to the calm room when he was inside on his own in a very distressed state. The report of this restraint incident has never been given to us.

Catherine feels her children were treated and disciplined as if they were neurotypical children acting out.

“My son needs something in his hand, a fidget. It’s part of his care plan. It might be a ribbon or a strap, but he must always have it. I got a call one day to collect him. I went in, saw that he was in a distressed state and gave him a hug. When I asked him where his fidget was, he said it had been taken from him because he’d been naughty. Staff were using his fidget, recommended by an OT, as a reward tool.” 

“The school is always talking themselves up about inclusion and how they include everyone, but on the open day for our new school, politicians, clergy and parents were invited into the new hall. The autism class teacher directed the orchestra while the boys in it sat in their classroom with their SNAs and were upset to miss the entire celebration.” 

Gareth Noble is a human rights solicitor specialising in child law. He has been involved in dozens of similar school-related cases in the last two or three years and with increasing frequency. He sees Boards of Management as a weakness in the system when relationships start to break down.

“These boards are composed of people who want to give back to the community. They’ve no training on how to deal with complaints. They’re often wholly ignorant of policies.” 

For Noble, true objectivity is also absent when things go wrong.

“The principal is also the secretary of the board. They have a vested interest in the outcome of the complaint. Parents are told they must wait for the local procedure to be exhausted but if that breaks down, they are left with no alternatives.” 

The solicitor also points to the obvious lack of supports in school settings and believes parents rarely know how stretched school staff might be.

“Parents end up blaming the school for failing to provide for their children but staffing decisions in terms of special education are being made externally by the NCSE and there’s very little the principal or the board can do about it.” 

There is a potential solution that’s fairer to staff and parents, according to the solicitor.

“Parents need a clear pathway to institute complaints. I would argue that the office of the ombudsman needs to be widened. We need an educational ombudsman to deal specifically with school-based complaints.” 

For Sandra, given her children’s experience, it’s not always about a lack of training.

“The school had an attitude that was against parents, a ‘don’t tell me how to do my job’ kind of thing. The HSE can make recommendations, but they can’t force schools to do anything as they are different departments. Nobody is keeping an eye on what’s happening.” 

The Department of Education carries out inspections of Irish schools. Reports are available online. If a school receives a ‘weak’ report in the specific area of special educational needs in mainstream classes, “recommendations and improvements in an inspection report rests mainly with the board and principal (or with the board and principal and the Chief Executive of the Education and Training Board (ETB) in the case of an ETB school). 

The patron or trustees of the school also have a responsibility to ensure that effective follow-up action is taken.

This differs to the UK system, which places schools in special measures. A school subject to special measures will have regular short-notice Ofsted or Estyn inspections to monitor its improvement. The senior managers and teaching staff can be dismissed, and the school governors replaced by an appointed executive committee.

A 2019 inspectorate report on special classrooms in 65 primary and 20 post-primary mainstream schools identifies a number of areas requiring improvement.

“Fewer than half of the teachers in the post-primary special classes used a range of autism-specific teaching approaches; there is significant scope to upskill teachers in these methodologies through CPD," it found.

“The National Council for Special Education (NCSE) should provide schools sanctioned to operate special classes for autism. In the primary special classes, the individualised planning process identified learning targets accurately in over two-thirds of settings.” 

Later it pointed out: “In a small number of cases these skills and knowledge were lacking because the special class teacher was not familiar with ASD approaches.” 

The need for specialist teachers

There will be 15,759 children in special classes in mainstream settings next year.

Simon Lewis, principal and education podcaster and commentator, argues against special measures but believes the system needs to change.

“To me, special measures are not the answer. Given that most inspectors have no formal training in special education, never mind education staff, it would seem a case of the blind leading the blind. The treatment of students with Additional Educational Needs (AEN) can be unacceptable, but I'd also argue that it is inevitable.” 

Lewis outlines the desperate need for specialist teachers for AEN.

“We have almost none. However, we are miles away from this situation and expecting ‘regular’ teachers to simply ‘upskill’ in areas where the solutions require significant investment and specialised equipment is, unfortunately, pie-in-the-sky thinking.

The HSE has allowed tens of thousands of children and adolescents to slip through the system with no interventions and then everyone seems to expect teachers, with no specialisation, to figure it all out on the back of some random one-day course.

He believes the NCSE needs to improve.

“Their supports need to include additional resources. Their resources should follow a child's needs, not some algorithm. Remember, over 95% of schools have not seen an increase in resources in three years. Right now, all they offer is a ‘chat’ with a specialist who won't observe any students. 

"Even if I find some of the stories upsetting and, in some cases, unforgivable, before special measures are considered, the government seriously needs to put in basic measures, so these situations are given the best chance of not happening in the first place.”