Luca, seven year old student of Colegio Sant Rafel, has begun the academic year without the educational technical assistant (ATE) that has accompanied him in class since he entered the school at four years old. A decision by the Balearic Ministry of Education that neither the school management nor the family understand. The little boy has an autism spectrum disorder, a grade two dependency and a 39% disability, in addition to “significant” curricular adaptations, explains his mother, Irene Moreno Tirado.
Previous requests to the Ministry of Education
“Every year we have to fight for resources”, regrets the mother, who recalls that on September 2nd she received a call from the school management to inform her that the Balearic Regional Ministry of Education had removed Luca’s assistant. The first thing the woman asked was if this was due to a reduction in the number of students with special educational needs attending the center. The answer given to her by those responsible for the center was no: “They told me that they are the same as in other years, if not more”. In fact, last June, before the end of the course, the direction of Sant Rafel already requested that the Ministry of Education provide this assistant, says the mother, who confesses that she feels uneasy leaving her little boy at school these days. “It’s anguish,” she says.
She knows that he is well cared for and that the school goes out of its way for him – “they do a lot of work to achieve this”, she stresses- but she is aware that her son needs this resource and what it means, not only for him, but also for the teachers and the rest of his classmates, is that the Ministry of Education has eliminated this professional. The mother explains that her son has a tendency to run away and, in addition, to ingest objects that are close at hand and can be dangerous, such as chalk. The assistant not only watches out for him so that this does not happen, but also reacts quickly and helps him where his autonomy does not reach. “Without an assistant, if my child has a problem and the teacher has to take care of him, she can’t take care of the other students at the same time. If he runs away and the teacher has to go out to look for him, they leave his 22 classmates unattended,” says the mother, a staunch advocate of inclusive education, who has never considered not taking her son to the center. “He was so excited!”, says Irene Moreno, who emphasizes the desire that Luca had to start the school year and return to the class “dels gatets i les gatetes”, which is the name of the group in which he is schooled.
Autism on alternate days
On September 8th, Moreno filed a complaint with the Servei d’Atenció a la Diversitat (SAD) of the Balearic Ministry of Education. In the document, the mother explains that Luca’s situation is the same as last year, so she does not understand that the Ministry of Education now considers that the student “can do without the help of an ATE”. “According to their criteria, Luca needs mild attention and nothing could be further from the truth,” she writes in the complaint, in which she demands a solution “immediately”, a request that, she explains, is supported by both the center and the counselor. The family requested this solution for the imminent start of the course on Monday and in the petition stresses that Luca needs this person “five days a week”. This was stressed because last year the Ministry of Education already reduced the attention of the assistant to three days. “As you can understand, autism does not disappear two days a week”, the mother clarifies, who continues: “We all have the right to an education and it is necessary that the resources needed to meet the needs of each student are assessed in a personalized and individual way”.
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