Responding to the news that special school nurseries in Northern Ireland are at risk of closure, NAHT believes that nursery education provides valuable and essential learning and developmental experiences for all children. Learning to share, play with others, listen to and enjoy stories and books, access a broad and balanced early years curriculum and learn the skills to explore and engage in the world around them.

For a child with additional educational needs, the support available to provide them with the best possible experiences to learn and develop becomes even more crucial. Special School nurseries have developed wonderful educational programmes, resources and environments to engage children at their own point of need and provide these essential experiences appropriately and safely. A multi-disciplinary approach, with effective links across a range of health professionals, is embedded within this.

While nursery provision is not currently statutory, the NAHT consider that it should be, and, in the case of our most vulnerable children, should be considered a right. 

Speaking on behalf of the NAHT SEN committee, the chairperson, Jonathan Gray, Principal of Arvalee School, stated “This is a disgrace. The children that my colleagues and I educate deserve the best possible start in school.

"To deny our early learners, our vulnerable learners, the children needing additional support and learning experiences, access to therapies, specialist resources and, most of all, access to teachers and classroom assistants clued into their needs, is unbelievable. Families that just need their child supported and now, two weeks before the end of year, they hear they have lost their place; it is an unbelievable situation.

"Weeks have gone by, and the only solution found for the children, our most vulnerable, without a place in school is to deny other vulnerable children. We, as the school leaders union, can’t fathom it. We feel for all involved – the children have been systematically failed. And we, as a country, should be ashamed. Where is Stormont? Where is the Department? These are the people whose job it is to protect the most vulnerable in society.

"As school leaders, our hearts are with the children and their families that have been so dreadfully let down.”

Liam McGuckin, NAHT NI President, stated “Our school leaders, who I represent, are wholly disgusted at the treatment of our vulnerable children. Indeed, the professional views of school leaders have not even been sought in this very significant and life-defining decision. NAHT will seeking answers as to how the system could allow hundreds of children with severe learning difficulties to arrive at school age with absolutely no planned provision whatsoever. With this in mind, NAHT will take this apparent failure to the Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman and the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People.”

The lack of any kind of consultation with school leaders alongside the fact that parents have received no warning of this at all represents an appalling disrespect for all parties, which cannot be considered acceptable by anyone.