Special needs children being taught in corridor

Children with special needs from counties Cavan and Monaghan are being educated in classroom spaces that include an adapted storage room, the end of a corridor and part of a home economics room. Despite this, the Holy Family School in Cootehill is not included in the Government’s current five-year school building programme.
Parents of the school’s 135 students are demanding that a new €8-€11m school is built without delay, as has been promised since the turn of the century, in order to allow their children reach their full potential. They point out that in 2004, the project was rated ‘Band 1’ status (top priority) and ask what has happened since?
Noeleen Skelly from Munterconnaught is the chairperson of the Parents Association at the school. Her 17-year-old daughter has autism and will be entering into her last year of education at the Holy Family School in September.
“For her, there will be no new school. From a parent’s point of view, you always want what’s best for your child. The opportunities she would have had being one of the students at a properly built school with access to everything, without having to go up and down to lunch each day, I think she would have benefited greatly.”
Noeleen, like the other parents, does not blame the teachers, assistants or those who manage the resources at hand for the good of the children. Her anger is directed firmly at the consecutive governments and Department of Education officials, who, she says, have repeatedly failed to deliver on what has been promised to The Holy Family School and the region as a whole.
A Department of Education spokesperson told the Celt last week that the project is now under “revised submission”, while the current Minister for Education, Ruairí Quinn, has said that the project will be advanced to design and planning stage so that the new school build is ready to proceed should funding become available.
Meanwhile, students with varying degrees of physical and intellectual disabilities are being taught in classrooms well below the recommended 70m², as stipulated by the most recent Department guidelines. Six of the current classrooms being used range from just 15m² to 28m².
Furthermore they are being ferried between the main school site on the Old Bridge Road and rented space in the White Star Complex in the town centre.
Costs for school management are also mounting in relation to necessary repairs on the main school building, rented space and the cost of transporting students between the schools and the White Star Complex. On the basis that the Holy Family School is not on the current five-year plan, school management estimate that these costs will increase by at least €500,000 in transport and rental over that period, not including other day-to-day running costs.

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