Dec 12, 2018, Irish Examiner: Special education teaching posts face cuts https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/special-education-teaching-posts-face-cuts-891448.html Education Minister Joe McHugh has been told by top officials in his department that there will be difficulties when it comes to assigning staffing allocations for special education next year. A new allocation system was introduced last year, under which every school was given an overall entitlement of special teachers based on a combination of factors. These included pupil numbers, children with complex needs, scores in standardised tests, gender mix, and disadvantaged status. … The new system was supported by increasing the number of special teachers by 900 in 2017 and by a further 100 this year, but no increase is planned for next year. The number of special education teachers in mainstream schools has risen by 37% since 2011 to over 13,300 at the same time that school enrolments climbed about 10% to over 950,000. …
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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