Principal makes impassioned plea for more special needs schools

THE principal of a Tyrone special school has said local parents are being made to ‘fight’ for placements because there ‘just aren’t the classroom spaces to go around’.

There are around 1,000 SEN (special educational needs) pupils across the North still waiting to find out which school they will be attending in September.

2023 saw a catastrophe unfold across the special education system, with hundreds of children ‘left in limbo’ deep into the summer holidays, unsure which school – if any – they would be joining when semester started.

However, while Education Minister Paul Givan has appealed for funding to avert the same crisis from occurring this year, the sector remains in a ‘profoundly precarious’ position.

“We had to turn down 47 pupils last year because we were already well beyond capacity,” said Paula Jordan, principal of Sperrinview Special School, which has one site in Dungannon and another in Cookstown.

Sperrinview was built 28 years ago to cater to 39 pupils.

Almost three decades on, there are 122 pupils on the original site in Dungannon and 25 in Cookstown.

“Because all special schools are saturated, most of those 47 pupils would have had to go into special provision in mainstream schools, the idea being that they will join us over the next couple of years.”

However, while Ms Jordan understands that attempting to cater to SEN children in conventional schools is the only viable short-term means of ensuring every pupil finds enrolment, she believes any long-term plan has to include building more schools.

“While pupil numbers are falling across the general education system, the number of SEN pupils is rising. Diagnostics are better now, more children have autism, and many babies that wouldn’t survive long past birth are now growing up healthy and going to school. The bottom line is, we need more schools to take all these extra pupils.”

“This year, we only have eight pupils leaving and we are taking ten new children on.

“There are a lot more parents calling, fighting tooth and nail to get their child through our doors, but it just isn’t possible.

“If I had the money, I would have a new school built in the morning, but I understand that it doesn’t work like that. It’s a long process, usually about six years. It takes inspection, deliberation, sign-offs, tenure, and, eventually, the construction.”

However, though Ms Jordan is down about the debilitated state the special education system finds itself in, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon for Sperrinview.

“We have the go-ahead for new classrooms on both our Dungannon and Cookstown sites.

“As well as that, the Education Authority are considering building a third site, but that is very much still in the early stages, and there has been nothing close to confirmation that it will go ahead.”

Concluding, she said, “Parents of children with special needs do not have it easy, from the day their child is born, they have to fight for everything. School places do not have to be another battleground.”