“It’s a little bit irritating when you hear about there being an explosion of autism and ADHD,” says Audrey Cepeda, a Dublin based secondary school teacher who works with support group DCA Warriors. “There isn’t. It’s just people are being diagnosed now.”
Not quickly enough, either, she says, after speaking at the TUI conference on Wednesday in Wexford where she called for teachers to ensure their work helping to deliver the educational element of the Assessment of Need (AON) is not allowed to be used in place of that of more qualified professionals.
“We need the correct people to come in to do this work,” she says. “There are parts of the AON assessment that teachers are the right people fill it out but not for complex cases and they’re being used even for the complex cases.
“A teacher should be allowed to say, ‘I don’t feel I can fill this out’, but they’re being pressured to do it and some are doing it under duress.”
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Ms Cepeda was one of those backing motions on the issue at the conference. One highlighted the importance of the AON process in enabling students to achieve their full potential but said teachers are commonly being required to complete the educational component when the High Court had indicated they should only be asked to assist.
“I know that there’s a huge lack of psychologists. I know the National Council for Special Education are under pressure. I understand that. But they shouldn’t be passing that pressure on to teachers. It should be going upwards. They should be saying: ‘We need more money. We need more psychologists.’”
Ms Cepeda said students, their families and the teachers themselves are all being let down by this way of doing things and the motion from her branch of the union, Dublin City, called on its leadership to get legal advice on what she believes is a conflict between the judgment in the Dawson High Court case on the issue and the circular issued last year by the Department of Education setting out the basis for teachers’ involvement in the process.
“The current situation is really not helping the student because, in some cases, things are being missed and that is actually delaying them getting the help they need while the teachers are being put through a kind of guilt trip.”
Asked about the issue during the visit to the conference, Minister for Education Helen McEntee said the Government is working to ensure more qualified professionals are available to conduct assessments.
“Teachers should never be asked to do the work of what is a qualified professional,” she said. “What they’ll be asked for is a certain part of an assessment that’s required based on their experience within their classroom and their knowledge of the child.
“But I think we all agree we need to be quicker at doing the Assessment of Need. And we need to make changes so that can happen.”
