SEN Teaching

TheValeyard

Whats the advice from the Unions about teachers who take SEN classes?

A large number of staff have a couple of hours per week for SEN students, (not the actual SEN dept staff)

but this year they've been hit with an increased workload

1) All teachers to fill out report cards on SEN students along with their regular class groups (Christmas reports, etc)

2) All teachers to have a meeting with the SEN teacher to organise work for that student

3) SEN teacher must fill out an A4 sheet per student, on what they will cover, needs of student, etc

I was under the impression their was something about SEN teaching not to be an added workload onto a teaching already busy schedule.

solerina

what you are describing is what is supposed to happen. Teachers who have students with SEN in their class have the primary responsibility to teach the student. The SEN dept are there to give extra support to the student. If you are timetabled for extra lessons then these should be treated like you would a normal class.

There is nothing that I have ever seen saying SEN should not be treated as professionally as other class periods.

TheValeyard

Cheers for the reply,

found one of what I was looking for in relation to the ASTI

https://www.asti.ie/document-library/letter-to-school-stewards-re-sen-march-2019-thursday-28-of/

Not sure if the above is still in effect or not. Will check with reps.

Also not sure why if say you at two students for one period of resource maths, id be filling out a report card to the parents when the mainstream teacher would be doing that anyway. Seems to be bit disjointed.

solerina

If you had the students for one class a week and they were in the mainstream maths class for the rest of the week then you wouldn’t necessarily fill out their report card, but if you had them a few times a week then you may be involved with the mainstream teacher in filling out the report.

The ASTI letter is in relation to IEPs which teachers have been told not to engage with due to the fact that the EPSEN act is still not enacted. Most schools are now calling these documents student support files and all mainstream teachers contribute to these. It’s a bit of a grey area though as these files are really the same as an IEP.

Bobtheman

What you listed above seems reasonable enough to do. It seems in our school the mainstream class teacher is becoming a minority figure as we are flooded with resource teachers and SNAs.

I think the budget says they will create more SNAs than teachers. Beggars belief