Department of HealthAny bid to “force” schools to enrol pupils with special educational needs (SEN) would be “wholly unacceptable,” Northern Ireland’s independent autism reviewer has said.
Ema Cubitt was speaking after the Education Authority (EA) said it was considering an unprecedented move to instruct some schools to admit SEN children.
The EA described the shortage of school places for SEN pupils as a “crisis” because an estimated 164 children are without a confirmed place for September 2025.
But Ms Cubitt said teachers were worried they may not be able to meet the needs of SEN pupils and she argued better leadership and support for schools is required.
“I haven’t seen any evidence that any school is saying: ‘I don’t want these children,'” Ms Cubitt told the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster programme.
“What we’re hearing is: ‘We’re concerned that we won’t be able to support these children,’ and I think that’s fair enough.”
Teaching unions have raised concerns that not all schools have the required training and facilities in place to cater for pupils with complex needs at short notice.
Ms Cubitt said highlighting those problems was “entirely reasonable”.
“I think what we’re seeing is not a reluctance, it’s because they care.”
She said the concerns of teachers, parents and everyone involved in the issue must be listened to.
Charlie, eight, without schooling since October
Fay WatsonOne mother, whose eight-year-old son has not had a suitable school place since October, told the BBC’s Nolan Show the wait was stressful and “very difficult”.
Fay Watson’s son Charlie, who has special needs, previously attended a special unit within a mainstream school, but the placement was not sufficient to meet his requirements.
“He does want to go to a school, he does want to feel like he belongs somewhere, but he does have some trauma from the experience not working out for him,” she said.
“He needs somewhere very nurturing for his needs and it is going to take a lot of time to reintegrate him, especially given how long we’ve waited this year.
“The longer he’s out of school, the harder it’s going to be to reintegrate him into a new placement.”
Faye tried to get emergency tuition for her son since he left school but said her request was rejected “because he has nowhere to go, so that’s kind of ironic”.
She said special units within mainstream schools are “very good environments” for many SEN children, but not all pupils can be accommodated.
“They definitely need a lot of resourcing to help them. They need OT (occupational therapy) equipment, they need access to OTs (occupational therapists), to speech therapists.
“There are quite complex children who are now going into these unit environments.”
Charlie is now waiting on a special school place for September.
Ms Cubitt said: “This hesitation from schools is not necessarily resistance, it is responsibility.
“And certainly the question I have is – if they’re not responding, why?”
She said she believed the EA would have known schools’ feelings through previous engagement on the issue and she questioned the assistance they had been offered.
“The perspective of trying to force schools to do something without the message coming alongside that that ‘we are strongly going to support you, these are the things we’re going to do’; without a clear message to parents – it’s just wholly unacceptable,” she said.
‘Nothing has changed’ says new watchdog
Ms Cubitt was appointed as Northern Ireland’s first independent autism reviewer last August.
Her role involves reviewing the adequacy of public services provided to autistic people, their families and carers.
“I’m almost a year into my post and see that essentially nothing has changed,” she told Good Morning Ulster.
In relation to the SEN school place shortage, Ms Cubitt said the EA was also overwhelmed by the situation and “good government leadership” was needed.
The chair of Stormont’s education committee said the crisis in SEN provision had been building over the past 15 years but “we have now hit a very, very low point”.
Nick Mathison said “we shouldn’t be dealing with this four days out from the end of term – this is a system failure.”
