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SPECIAL NEEDS ASSISTANTS have voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action over the delay in assigning allocations for the 2018 school year.
Impact trade union - which represents almost 8,000 school special needs assistants (SNAs) – balloted members up until yesterday over taking industrial action.
A total of 97% of members voted in favour of the action.
SNAs are angry over the fact that government doesn’t publish the allocations before the end of the summer term.
“The delays have meant that SNAs don’t know if they have a job to return to the following school year, but are unable to apply for redeployment in the event that they don’t,” Impact previously said in a statement.
The industrial action (which will be up to and may include a general strike) hopes to achieve:
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SNAs are misused, underused, undertrained (through no fault of their own) and taken advantage of countrywide. Support them 100%
@Graham: Couldn’t agree more.
Spot on Graham. Totally undervalued.
@Graham: four years ago they were protesting that their jobs were being axed. Short memories. Upturn in economy tends to do that.
@rory conway: so they should’ve been happy their jobs were being axed and should accept sub-par, putting it politely, working conditions now?
@Graham: Couldn’t agree more Graham. As a teacher I have been fortunate to have worked with a number of tremendously hard-working SNAs over the last 15 years. They are run ragged, have huge responsibility and are far too often underappreciated by management and teaching staff. The department’s idea of sanctioning ‘SNA access’ to many pupils isn’t helping either- the department seem to be of the opinion that children’s care needs such as toileting, sensory breaks etc can be scheduled on a time table and the poor SNAs end up spending the day running from one child to another, all the time feeling guilty that they aren’t doing enough.
My son’s SNA is a godsend. They are expected to do much more than what there supposed to
much more needed also then what’s on offer. saw one school last year with 3 autistic children among 28 class members. teacher had her hands full. they also need alot more male SNA’s
@Shane McDonnell: Agreed. God knows how many students have “access” to an SNA they may rarely if ever see, through no fault of the SNA. Depends on the needs of the students with autism, not all require SNA assistance but many do. And have only ever met one male SNA, who’s now a teacher.
@Graham: it’s something I’m considering doing but all courses seem to be running
@Shane McDonnell: they usually run the academic year. The 4 SNAs I work with all get immense job satisfaction (or so they say at least) but there’s huge variance between schools and the conditions aren’t what they should be
@Graham: what you mean when you say huge variance among schools and conditions aren’t what they should be?
@Shane McDonnell: some schools treat u like dirt others less so the whole social care industry is like that it can take years to find a company that’ll treat you ok,no sick pay is standard its ok to the social with you for that
@Shane McDonnell: similar to what Andrew says. SNA input is valued differently or not at all depending on the school. A lot of schools expect them to do quite a bit beyond their job description, the students actual care needs. A large amount of students have “access to an SNA” but there’s nowhere near enough SNAs employed to provide all that access. This can lead to SNAs running around a school from student to student providing fractions of the support a student needs (through no fault of theirs) and not being able to develop the relationship with the student that their job requires. Also SNAs attached to special classes are misused wholesale. I could go on….
Interesting to see those caring folk in FF have voted no to a change in the 8th amendment but have no comment on SNA’s. Obviously once your out of the womb they don’t care about you……
@Kerry Blake: strange logic. If they could all be killed or aborted, there would be no need for SNAs or any other teachers.
Too much workload now on special needs assistants and special needs/resource teachers. Resource Teachers can hardly get to teach kids now because they spend so much time on paperwork for accomodations for exams and pointless ‘plans’ for kids who need help. Special needs assistants often end up minding students as Resource teachers are bogged down in paper
have your say