Jennifer Horgan: Scoil Mhuire founder could teach department about pupil equality

Study periods were held in a Dickensian library with mahogany bookcases covered in wire mesh.

We’d peer through to decipher the titles on the spines of leather-bound books, as doors on either side of the room opened and closed.

So many of our rooms were through ways. Classrooms had out-of-use fireplaces, the cracked smiles of mantlepieces underlining chalkboards. They also had expansive, Georgian sash windows, letting in the most beautiful light, framing the changing shades of trees along Wellington Rd.

I remember my school day seasons so vividly.

The “school” ran across two higgledy-piggledy houses. History was taught in an attic room. We’d crouch beneath the eaves, marvelling at the storytelling of our wonderful teacher, Gloria O’Flynn.

At lunch, students ran a tuck shop from a basement broom cupboard, near the Home Ec room, where some of the goodies were produced. Our school stage was across the road, two small classrooms tucked inside its wings.

In the cold of winter, we’d huddle around old-fashioned rads. In the heat of summer, we’d splay across the footsteps up outside Sheila’s hostel, layering on baby oil and rolling our shirts up to our chests.

They were happy, innocent times, at least that’s how I remember them.

And yet, despite its old-fashioned, almost Victorian quirkiness, Scoil Mhuire modernised the lives of Cork girls back when few people were interested.

The junior school, founded a few years later, turns 70 this year. Both schools boast this proud heritage.

It is easy to forget now, when girls are thriving alongside boys in our secondary schools, that back in 1951 — when my school was founded by Mary O’Donovan and her friend Kathleen Cahill — secondary education was an entirely private affair.

Free secondary education didn’t come in until 1967, and where a family had money, it was spent on sons. Girls, in line with the (hopefully outgoing) wording of our constitution, were left at home, moulded to perform their gender-based “duties”.

Mary O’Donovan, Mary O as we fondly called her, would have turned 100 last week if she were alive today.

I owe her a great deal for my education, for the legacy she left of seeing the potential in girls, for emphasising the importance of a holistic education, for knowing that exams and third level are not of supreme importance, and for truly cherishing all children as equal.

Girls in 1951, and long before it, were let down by the system.

Mary O’s birthday last week got me thinking, who might our present-day equivalents be?

Those children who are being let down in 2024. I’d say it’s quite the list, including immigrant children, children of colour, LGBT+ children, and traveller children.

However, there is one group I will focus on this week who are blatantly targeted by the Department of Education — children with additional needs.

Anyone with any experience of complex needs knows that they cannot be captured in standardised tests, and yet the department has recently announced a plan to use these tests to do exactly that.

In their new allocation model, they will grant special education teaching hours based on three criteria only.

Complex needs will no longer feature, and all allocations will fall in line with levels of deprivation, enrolment numbers, and standardised testing.

Principals in primary education have responded by signing a petition. There were 730 signatures on the last count, and within that petition are comments from schools on how this move is going to affect their most vulnerable students.

I want to give the voices of educators, direct descendants of people like Mary O, space in my column this week.

Annette Dolan, principal in Wicklow, writes: “As educators, we spend so much of our time supporting our SEN children, attaining diagnosis, seeking supports from NEPS, CDNT, Lucena/Camhs, and the allocation of SEN hours should be based on the needs of our children. It should not matter what address they live at, what our enrolments numbers are, or the level of their standardised tests. Do we disregard the supports of an ASD child because they get a good score?

“It doesn’t evaluate the social/emotional regulation that is needed for that child, but assessment does.

“Look at the children and their needs, not their addresses!”

Teresa O’Connor, in Tipperary, writes: “I am both a principal of a school and a parent of a pupil with complex needs. It is heartbreaking that our children are being failed once again. There are no public services available for our children with complex needs, and now they are being removed from our school system as if they are second-class citizens and not worthy of an education. Life for children with complex needs is difficult, they must work the hardest to make minute progress. Our education system is regressing.”

Ian Lane, in Dublin, says: “It’s mind-boggling that the department has no record of the number of children with complex needs in our school, and that our SET allocation doesn’t take these children into account. We are drowning in needs, with little or no support from NEPS, NCSE, HSE or SLTs, and OTs. Webinars and ‘have you tried his programme/initiative?’ just don’t offer schools any practical support. Schools are at breaking point. Teachers are leaving due to stress and burnout. Principals are exhausted. Enough is enough.”

These are people working on the ground as principals every day fighting for better for our most vulnerable children, in the same way Mary O’Donovan fought for girls in 1951. My fear is that no one’s really listening. It’s a news story that has sunk to the bottom of the cycle under the weight of the RTÉ scandal. Any attempt to shift attention, to contextualise the RTÉ scandal, is accused of “whataboutery”.

What particularly breaks my heart is that primary schools have a system in place to record the real needs of their children, and the department refuses to accept the information.

The Department of Education won’t get the results of any standardised tests in primary until second class. They know this. They also know that a child loses all their supports from nursery school coming into junior infants. They know that a child will have to wait four years to appear on paper and, even then, there is every likelihood that their results won’t capture their needs.

As Michelle Briggs, a principal in Waterford, writes: “They can no longer ignore the additional needs of the children in our schools. Early intervention is crucial, so the appropriate supports should be in place when children start school. Our children deserve it.”

Our children deserve it indeed.