This is what happens when local authorities cut ASNA hours and nobody, parents, teachers etc do anything to stop it because they think it won’t affect them / their kids. Since my daughter started primary in 2014, numbers have been halved in our area. And now, guess what? Parents and teachers are complaining because, there are fewer resources in school for things like school plays, golden time, lunchtime groups, sports days, assemblies, playtime and medical room cover. Who do you think used to do all that stuff? The ASNA staff. They were the backbone of the school but nobody noticed or cared. They thought cutting the hours would just mean that those “other” kids would struggle and that was ok because their kids didn’t need ASNA. Now the hours available are so short that these staff only have time to support disabled kids, and actually don’t have enough hours to do that.
Every year when these cuts were proposed, I tried to engage parents and teachers. Nobody ever seemed to think they needed to do anything. And yet our council suggests cutting the breakfast clubs that only run for 30 minutes in the morning (which my daughter couldn’t use because there were not support staff available) and there was a riot, parents were protesting. They wanted to do half day Fridays (which every LA around us does)and the world went mad, big discussions, meetings, consultations, protests. Now they are cutting ASN spaces instead and it is left to us parents of disabled kids to fight for it.
The last round of school strikes here, we had teachers telling us it wasn’t about money, it was about a lack of support, they were fighting for ASNAs too. They got their pay rise, went back to work, ASN was cut because there LA had less money to spend, having had to increase their teacher salary budget.
I have some sympathy for teachers. It isn’t an easy job, I couldn’t do it. But pay and conditions have improved over the years. Protected teaching time is way better than it used to be but there are other challenges that make the job harder than ever before. Most of those challenges could be solved by providing more additional support staff for the kids who need it. Until teachers wake up and down tools specifically for that reason and don’t return until it’s solved, we will just keep throwing more money at teacher salaries in the hope they don’t quit.
I’m not saying teachers don’t deserve to be well paid. They do. They have a really important job. They should be paid more and given proper break times, but until we value ASN staff, the kids are the ones who really suffer.