All trainee teachers will be required to undergo mandatory placement in special education under reforms proposed by Minister for Education Helen McEntee.

It comes as a threefold increase in autism prevalence in the past decade has resulted in schools struggling to address the needs of students with special needs.

Principal of Scoil Naomh Colmcille in Togher, County Louth, Anne Marie Ford told The Pat Kenny Show that the assumption that a class of children will all learn in the same way “is gone”.

“It’s not just about special classes; it’s about every class today – and I suppose a lot of the concern is around behaviour management, not differentiated learning, which would be looked at in the training colleges,” she said.

“More needs to be understood in this regard; education is evolving just like medicine; there’s a continual need for professional development and upskilling.”

24 September 2019, Bavaria, Munich: A pencil case and hearing protection are lying on a table in the classroom of a 2nd class of a primary school. Due to the lack of teachers in Bavaria, fewer and fewer fully trained special education teachers teach at the special needs schools. Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa

Ms Ford said her school is “struggling” with applying early intervention methods, as many parents have to take their children out of school for the day to avail of certain supports.

“We have parents who are taking children out at maybe 11 o’clock from Togher, travelling all the way [to] the other side of Dublin to Dundrum for speech and language therapy, for OT therapy,” she said.

“The child is missing out on the day in school, the OT or the speech language therapist is getting a snapshot of a child in that time.

“We really need a school-based approach where we have these multi-agencies coming in and we’re all working together – the teachers, the parents and the multi-agency discipline such as speech and language and psychology.”

Multi-agency approach

According to Ms Ford, this is due to the fact that there is no available State-paid occupational therapist for children in all of Louth.

“There are positions there but they’re not filled for various reasons,” she said.

Ms Ford said teachers shouldn't be "on their own" managing children's needs, and "we need that wrapper around service coming into the school".

Main image: Learning support assistant (LSA) with Special educational needs and Disability (SEND) child in classroom. Image: roger askew / Alamy.