Spending on under-fives with special learning needs welcomed

24 August, 2016

Early Childhood Council welcomes government plans to increase spending on under-fives with special learning needs

Early Childhood Council CEO Peter Reynolds has welcomed government plans to increase spending on pre-schoolers with special learning needs, calling the current system ‘a disaster for under-fives’.

Mr Reynolds said today (24 August) that the Government appeared to be ‘seriously contemplating’ allocating to early childhood education services ‘something more than the tiny 5% of special education funding we receive currently’.

He said the plans were controversial because they threatened to shift resource from schools to early childhood services, but were justified because the money would do more good in early childhood education.

Mr Reynolds called the current system ‘crazy’.

‘We leave thousands of preschool children undiagnosed, untreated or inadequately treated. This creates unnecessary and sometimes unresolvable problems. We then send these children to school where both school and child struggle to address the consequences of this.’

Early Childhood Council surveys had repeatedly revealed a dire situation for children under five with special learning needs, Mr Reynolds said.

The most recent survey (of 153 early childhood centres) revealed it was the norm to wait at least three months ‘and often much longer’ for Ministry of Education-provided assistance with assessment and diagnosis. And many diagnosable children were not being assessed until they reached the special education services available to schools.

Ninety per cent of surveyed centres said they did not receive Education Support Workers (to work one-on-one with children) for the amount of time required, Mr Reynolds said. And 80% of these cited ‘delayed development’ as a consequence - and delayed development was ‘damage that could last a lifetime’.

Mr Reynolds said most pre-schoolers with special learning needs, if lucky enough to be diagnosed, received hopelessly inadequate help. Children were often isolated and anxious, falling further and further behind. Some physically attacked teachers and other children.

Small centres were sometimes forced to put one teacher on one child full time, leaving an effective teacher-child ratio of maybe one to 19 for everyone else – a ratio that would be illegal in other circumstances. And families of preschool children with special learning needs ‘suffered terribly’ when they knew neither what was wrong with their child, nor what to do about it.

Mr Reynolds said he ‘agreed 100%’ with Minister of Education Hekia Parata that learning support early in a child's life had greater impact than support later in life, and that special education money should be spent where it did the most good.

There was ‘huge support’ from the early childhood education sector for what the Minister was trying to do, he said.

‘We need a research-backed approach that allocates special education money according to what delivers the best long-term outcomes for children.

‘If 5% for early childhood education does not achieve this, the question is: “what does?”’

Mr Reynolds said he was ‘not happy’ that the new money might be coming at expense of schools, but the evidence suggested it would do more good in early childhood education.

‘There will be those who argue for the perpetuation of the current situation,’ he said. ‘But it is an argument they are unlikely to win in circumstances in which logic has anything to do with the outcome.’

Mr Reynolds said a reallocation of resource had the potential to ‘change lives for the better, and forever’ and he was confident the Minister would hold her ground and do what was best for children.

A summary of Early Childhood Council research revealing the damage done by the current system can be accessed for free by emailing anthony@ecc.org.nz.

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