'These children are not being seen' - Severely disabled kids lose teacher aide hours

Some of the most severely disabled children in Auckland are losing teacher aide hours due to a local policy change that has angered parents and principals.

They have been told the Education Ministry will standardise the number of teacher aide hours allocated to each child supported by the ministry's Ongoing Resourcing Scheme.

Principals said they understood that all children at Auckland schools judged to have high needs would next year receive funding for 13 hours and those with very high needs would receive 20 hours.

The change meant some children would receive funding for fewer teacher aide hours next year and others would receive more.

The policy was already in place in other parts of the country, but was new for Auckland.

Principals said the per-hour funding provided by the ministry was less than the hourly rates schools paid their teacher aides, meaning they had to top up the funding or provide fewer hours.

Lucy Bennett said she was heart-broken that her son David would lose an hour of teacher aide time as a result of the move.

"It's incredibly frustrating that these children are not being seen, their potential is not being supported. It's heart-breaking, absolutely heart-breaking... I'm incredibly angry," she said.

Bennett said every hour mattered because her son was classified as "high needs" under the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme and required physical assistance as well as help with learning.

She said the ministry's funding was enough to cover 12 hours of teacher aide time and David's school Bayswater paid for a further four.

Bennett said her son belonged in a mainstream school because he was social, extroverted and able, despite his physical limitations and learning difficulties.

"We are so worried that he will get completely lost in the under-resourced education system and not reach his fullest potential. As a parent, you are completely reliant on each individual principal and BOT's differing ideas about inclusion and whether they want to stretch their limited resources to support each individual neurodiverse child - even with ORS funding," she said.

Bayswater School principal Marianne Coldham said the change would also cut two hours from another of her pupils.

She said the funding was already inadequate for the level of assistance the children required and losing even one hour was not on.

"You don't know when that child's going to need a teacher aide. You have normal toileting hours but there are times when they need toileting in between. They need to be watched when they're fed for safety reasons. We need them to be transported around the school so they can participate in choir and kapa haka and all those sorts of things so taking even more hours off them is just not acceptable," she said.

Coldham said the shift to a blanket allocation of teacher aide hours was not fairer because different children had different needs.

She said disabled children did not receive enough support from the government.

"It's not sufficient. When the policies came in about children coming into mainstream it was fantastic and we were promised support so they could get the best out of it and it just isn't enough."

Auckland Primary Principals Association president Kyle Brewerton said the city's schools were still waiting to be told what was happening, but a few had heard from the ministry.

"We know that some schools have been contacted, we're not sure how many. In particular one school received a phone call to say they were receiving a significant reduction, 50 hours a term, for the three students she has in her school," he said.

Brewerton said everyone lost if a child lost teacher aide hours.

"The obvious impact is that that young person doesn't have that immediate support, which then puts the pressure back on the classroom teacher, which then takes the teacher away from those other students and the student who needs that additional support doesn't receive it, so everyone loses in that scenario," he said.

Brewerton said the ministry was moving to a one-size-fits-all model, but the needs of disabled children were not one-size-fits-all.

The Ministry said ORS provided a maximum of 13 hours for High ORS and 20 hours for Very High ORS.

"In some regions TA hours are moderated so they are better able to respond the needs of the child and different points of time. For example: a child may receive increased hours while they are transitioning to a new school and these hours will be reduced once settled or if they had a surgery and require additional support to manage their personal cares and health needs. Some regions have chosen not to moderate TA hours and allocate the maximum number of hours," it said.

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