That cuts tend to hit the most vulnerable hardest is a common statement. Never has it been more true than in relation to the proposal by the Education Authority to cut the number of hours that children with significant disabilities will receive in pre-school at one of the North’s 39 special schools. How can the Sinn Féin Minister for Education, John O’Dowd, allow such a short-sighted and discriminatory policy to proceed? It is short-sighted because children with developmental delay benefit most from early intervention and it is discriminatory because, were the child to attend a mainstream pre-school setting, they would receive more than 2.5 hours a week. One of the main reasons that special schools remain is because they provide the speech, physio and occupational therapy that disabled children need in order to be able to learn; the 2.5 hours a day that will be offered from next September will not allow them to access even these therapies, still less any of the pre-school educational opportunities that their non-disabled brothers and sisters take for granted. Rather than cut provision to the truly most vulnerable of our children, the Minister could save tens of millions by moving to end the duplicated resources of our segregated education system. Eamonn McCann
