Aug 7, 2018, Scoop: More education professionals to vote on striking http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED1808/S00015/more-education-professionals-to-vote-on-striking.htm Learning Support specialists employed directly by the Ministry of Education have today begun a secret online vote over whether to strike for a day on Tuesday 21 August. Specialists including psychologists, speech language therapists, early intervention teachers, and other professionals provide specialist, itinerant support to the increasing number of children with the highest learning needs in schools and ECE centres. … “There aren’t enough specialists for the children who need the support, and those of us in the job are pushed to our limits with extreme workloads. We need more front-line specialists so all children get the support they need without delay, and we have to ensure specialist staff are paid enough to both recruit and retain their skills for our children.” Numbers of children with high needs are increasing. The government has increased funding for those children to access support, but now needs to ensure the specialist staff are available and able to manage with reasonable caseloads….
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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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