This Friday marks the deadline for public input on a new special education philosophy for the Island’s public schools, to be put in place within three years time.

After years of frustration for parents of special needs students, Junior Education Minister Grant Gibbons told MPs there was now “a growing sense that something is different”.

“There is a feeling from some who have struggled to be heard, that they are now being listened to — and this is because they are being listened to,” Dr Gibbons said, presenting a discussion paper on inclusive and special education before the House of Assembly.

Dr Gibbons conceded that the move in the 1990s toward inclusion in schools had failed to become “truly inclusive”.

“Beliefs didn’t change entirely — and still haven’t,” he said.

Instead of inclusion, special needs students had largely ended up being “mainstreamed”, Dr Gibbons said.

“Students with various special education needs were put in regular schools, even if the school wasn’t geared toward meeting their needs.”

Calling for an overhaul of the Education Act 1996, Dr Gibbons said the new approach would focus on early intervention for the Island’s youngest students.

“Something as simple as getting a child’s eyes tested can make a difference in whether or not a child learns to read.”

While the Ministry of Education traditionally hasn’t diagnosed learning and intellectual disabilities, Dr Gibbons said new Education Commissioner Edmond Heatley was currently making it a Ministry priority.

Acknowledging that parents had voiced frustration over their concerns not being addressed, Dr Gibbons said a new mediation and dispute resolution process would be build onto the “existing but underutilised complaints process within schools” — while a parents’ guide to inclusive and special education would also be introduced.

The Ministry will also phase out cost-intensive practices that hadn’t worked, he said, by measuring value-added results.

“There has been a heavy reliance on one-to-one paraprofessionals for many children with special education needs,” Dr Gibbons said. “Not only is this not sound educational practice for all children, but it is quite expensive. Historically, the Ministry has spent money that it did not have on special education — and, in many instances, it didn’t plan ahead or make sufficient adjustments when the money wasn’t there.”

He continued: “That era is ending, and the Ministry has increased scrutiny. Money will not be allocated where it is not being well spent.”

The One Bermuda Alliance MP said Government’s consultation, run in conjunction with the Coalition for Community Activism in Bermuda, had shown parents wanted better service along with appropriately equipped educators.

Public feedback had also revealed “a degree of scepticism, and a sentiment that a policy is long overdue”, he said.

Dr Gibbons urged parents and advocacy groups to share their views on special education with the Ministry, ahead of Friday’s deadline. The Ministry will publish its findings early next year, ahead of the White Paper on inclusive and special education promised in last month’s Throne Speech.

Responding from the Opposition, Shadow Education Minister Walton Brown commended the early assessment feature.

“We could ask the question why wasn’t it done before, but that’s not helpful,” he added. “It will be done going forward.”

Mr Brown noted a penchant for “overdiagnosing our young people and drugging them” to deal with difficulties in the classroom.

Calling himself impatient with the September, 2016 deadline, Mr Brown added: “If anything could be done to expedite this, I’d be very happy.”

Former educator and Progressive Labour Party MP for St David’s Lovitta Foggo said she had witnessed firsthand “the ills of inclusion” when the philosophy was first implemented.

Calling for caution, so that adequate manpower, infrastructure and training was in place, Ms Foggo continued: “When we do implement such a programme, we have to do it very carefully. Not all the time are the intended outcomes actually what come into being; sometimes it has the opposite effect. Many of us came up in a system where you had the 11-plus exam. Any system that uses one criterion as an assessment tool for youngsters, I would never advocate that. You need assessment tools, but it shouldn’t be one tool that renders a child successful or not.”

Ms Foggo said she embraced inclusion, but stressed that we “cannot, cannot, cannot just embrace something whole heartedly without ensuring that we have taken all of the best practices, and are going to make certain that those best practices are implemented in a way that enhances student performance, teacher performance and embodies the mission statement of education”.

Glen Smith, the OBA MP for Devonshire North West, got applause for his frank account of his own struggles with dyslexia.

“I wish we could move this quicker than 2016, that’s for sure,” Mr Smith said.

“Dyslexia is not a learning disorder; it’s a learning difference,” he said.

Mr Smith commended the move to early assessment, telling the House he hadn’t been diagnosed until the age of 12.

“If I had been diagnosed earlier, perhaps I would not have been kicked out of school,” he said, recalling how his headteacher had told him he would “never amount to anything in life”.

Mr Smith said both his sons had inherited his learning issues, along with attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity.

“They’ve also got ADD and ADHD, so they got a double and triple whammy,” he said. “With early detection, we’re able to make the necessary moves.”

Saying he got regular calls from constituents whose children were struggling in school, Mr Smith added: “All I can do is say there is a plan coming down the road. I try to steer them toward the Reading Clinic, but the Reading Clinic isn’t big enough.”

And PLP MP Wayne Furbert said he’d watched “the education football going around over the years”.

“The best way for us to move education ahead is that we all support the direction, no matter who the Minister is,” Mr Furbert said, pledging Opposition backing for the reforms.

“You have our support,” he said. “We’ve got to move this off the political minefield and get things done.”