Immigrant Student

Lappies81

Hi all.

I am Irish, my husband is South African and has been living in Ireland for 17 years. On a recent visit to South Africa we discovered that his 17 year old cousin is very passionate about coming to live in Ireland. He has a British Passport (but has lived his whole life in South Africa) so would be coming to Ireland on that basis. He is in the equivalent of 5th year and received a scholarship to a major rugby school, he is a highly skilled rugby player and has been very successful in that area, but as he is severely dyslexic, his scholarship was cancelled after 4 months in this school year. The school did not support his academic needs even though they had been made aware of it before he accepted the scholarship. He is now being home schooled but he is missing out on a lot of opportunities and is now more adament than ever to come to Ireland.

The South African education system is below par with Ireland. Can anyone give me any information on how I would go about enrolling him in an Irish Secondary School, or if that is possible as he is a member of the EEA but not a citizen of Ireland. He would probably have to start in a lower year, how much support he would receive/be entitled to for his dyslexia. I know he would have to be assessed. As he has not really had any dyslexia specific learning support, would he need to go to a more specialised school(if there is such a thing) as he is an older student or would he need private support in addition to mainstream school? My own son is almost 7 and has dyslexic tendencies so I know how important early intervention is, and it's a shame that he did not receive any but I would hate for him to loose out through no fault of his own.

I will speak to the principal of my children's primary school, but if anyone has any kind of experience with this I would be so appreciative.

Laura

Airyfairy12

You'd be better off speaking to principles of your local secondary schools. He will need to do the entire leaving cert curriculum from scratch so will likely start off in 5th year, schools usually have a remedial class for students suffering with dyslexia and other difficulties, its very unlikely that he'd be placed in a special school because of dyslexia unless he has other learning difficulties that are a result of disability and anyway it would be his own choice or his parents/guardians choice on whether he went to a special school or not. Ive seen kids with down syndrome and other severe disabilities in mainstream schools at the detriment of the child because the parents don't want to deal with the stigma of having a child attending a special needs school so he certainly won't be forced into anything.
There should also be local supports that you can avail of, your best chance of finding information is to speak to staff at local secondary schools, a local special needs school or facility could help you with finding extra supports as they'd know who to contact.