State psychology services provided to schools in Ireland have “absolutely collapsed”.

That is according to Carlow Educate Together principal Simon Lewis who told The Hard Shoulder today that 76% of schools do not have enough support hours to manage children with certain needs.

The National Education Psychology Service (NEPS) currently operates a system that designates a certain amount of psychological support hours to school based on an algorithm.

Mr Lewis said the system is “nonsense” as “a child isn’t an algorithm”.

“A child has needs and they need whatever they need to help them with those needs,” he said.

“These algorithms, we don’t know how they are being calculated and they’re being protected through Freedom of Information requests - so we’re not going to find out.

“They seem to be based on criteria that just don’t make sense for some children.”

Hours cut

Mr Lewis said the weekly support hours available to his school have been cut recently.

“We had 192 hours and it was cut to 177 just like that,” he said.

“They say your school is only entitled to a certain number of hours and you need to spread them across children.

“At the moment I have 146 children that require some sort of support and I have 177 hours a week available to them – it’s not possible to give them all proper support.”

Dyslexia struggles

Rebecca Kelly said she has struggled to get support for her daughter who has been diagnosed with dyslexia.

“We had to apply ourselves privately to get her diagnosed which took years and cost €1,200,” she said.

“Her school has been fantastic but she is in a Gaelscoil so she had to come out of that to help support her English.

“But this year the new school came to us and said their support hours have been taken off.

“We were told to apply for other schools that concentrate on kids with complex needs as they couldn’t support our daughter anymore.”

Ms Kelly said there was a “horrific” time when her daughter was not getting the support she needed and her confidence had dropped.

Thankfully, she was recently accepted to a specialist school in Dublin that caters to dyslexic children.

You can listen back here:

Main image: A psychologist speaks to a child. Image: Roman Lacheev / Alamy Stock Photo