General Election 2011

Can we lobby for change?

The long-awaited general election is upon us. What can we ask the candidates when they come knocking on our door?

After the last election in 2007, the Program for Government included a commitment to recognise the existing ABA Pilot Schools. But after all the discussions, all we've ended up with is a transition process that converts our ABA schools into Special Schools. The Department of Education has agreed to:

• Recruit Principal and teachers to assume full responsibility for teaching
• Re-hire our existing tutors, but classify them as SNA's (Special Needs Assistants)
• Fund our existing Director of Education, but only temporarily (max 7 years)

The new Special School will have a hard job maintaining its adherence to the science of ABA. It can use "a range of evidence-based interventions, including ABA", but it can't be "an ABA school". Without a guaranteed long-term post for the ABA professional, it will be very hard to keep our ethos intact once the existing ABA-trained and qualified staff leave the Special School.

So why can't we ask the candidates and their parties if they can commit to the following:

• Evaluate the success of the existing ABA Pilot Schools over the last 10 years
• Recognise the role and responsibilities of our ABA qualified staff and put these roles on a permanent footing - in particular, our BCBA-qualified Director of Education
• Allow our school to require any incoming teaching staff to have appropriate ABA qualifications
• Recognise our tutors as more than SNA's ... at the very least, "ABA SNA's". 

Before we lose our ABA personnel, surely we should evaluate whether or not our Pilot schools were and are effective? This evaluation was a serious omission over the last number of years. This would neither be costly or take much time. Subject to the outcome of this evaluation, we would base our request for maintaining ABA qualifications in all our teaching posts.

If the evaluation shows that we are not as good as we say we are, then (unlikely as it is), we'd have to bear the consequences.

It's a bit like asking that a recently-established and specialised Brain Surgery Hospital keep its brain surgeons as part of its transition into the HSE, starting with an evaluation to see if this new brain surgery really works as well as they claim it does! Without our ABA qualifications, we can't keep our service based on the science of ABA. Obvious, no? 

And remember, these commitments will not cost the State any additional funding.