Dyslexia: Funding and learning

Dyslexia affects many families in many forms and recently the MoE has recognised that dyslexia has been sufficiently researched to indicate the involvement of educational researchers and, at the ‘chalk face’, teachers and other specialised special needs professionals to assist in identifying and consulting with families for future programme advice and teaching.

The rhetoric of all educational policies within NZ is fairly straightforward, in terms of policy making, and is often presented in educational jargon that can raise the hopes of parents but, in fact, in reality results in false hopes and dreams for their children when little funding and few experts are available to support them.

Creative and pro-active thinking principals and Special Needs co-ordinators often struggle to embrace the policies and needs of their communities and continually juggle their funding in order to provide adequate programmes.

The Special Education Grant (SEG) and other interventions (Group Special Education/MoE) are clearly stretched, in terms of available dollars and trained professionals that are equally available in school.

Some RTLBs have willingly taken on additional teaching roles whereas other professionals have studied at post graduate level to both understand the complexities of the students’ needs and the scarcity of resources and funding.

The dilemma of restricted funding for Special Needs is not recent and has been one of on-going ministry concern and one of extensive public debate since the 1980s.

John Minto, the catalyst in the Quality Public Education Coalition, (QPEC) and others examined and discussed publicly the plight of Special Needs students over the past 10 years.

However, it appears that little has changed, in terms of provisions at the local level; this at a time when the Picot Report and Tomorrow’s Schools (compiled as a consequence of the Roger­nomics era in mid 1980’s) generally based their recommendations on tenets that all children would receive the support they needed when attending their local school.

Clearly, these outcomes are still not occurring in a consistent manner and children with special needs are still an addendum, rather than being considered as part of the circle.

— Judy Selvaraj, Registered Educational Psychologist, Registered Teacher