Schools' work with children with disabilities and challenging behaviour will investigated by the Education Review Office next year.
A teacher aide works with special needs students. Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen
Chief review officer Nicolas Pole said the apparently increasing number of children with special needs had prompted the office to carry out a national review.year.
"Schools keep telling us that the student population that they are working with today with complex and challenging needs seem to be growing. They report increases in the identification of students with dyslexia, autism, foetal alcohol syndrome and more students appear to be presenting with challenging behaviour."
Mr Pole said the office would consider how the needs of the student population had changed and how effectively schools were responding.
That would include how schools used teacher aides to work with children with special needs and how effectively they were using their funding.
The principal of Berhampore School in Wellington, Mark Potter, said it had a higher proportion of children with special learning needs than many other schools.
"At our school at least between 20 and 30 percent of the children have some form of learning disability or challenge, most of which have some kind of diagnosis. Other schools in the area definitely wouldn't have that density, but they do have children [with learning needs] as well."
Mark Potter said the school did not get enough resourcing for the needs it was trying to meet and had to use funding from other areas to cover the costs.
"What we actually receive is nowhere near enough. It's so not near enough, I barely even think about it. I worry more about what we're spending over and above, that is our big issue."
Educational Institute president Lynda Stuart said there was a huge need for more funding.
"As far as special education is concerned, support in that area can't come quickly enough," she said.
However, the president of the Principals Federation, Whetu Cormick, said there had already been a lot of scrutiny of special education, and he doubted that another report was required when it was clear that more funding was needed.
IHC director of advocacy at Trish Grant said there was a lot of evidence already about what was wrong with special education.
"They're going to find out that the resourcing is stretched too thinly, that schools don't have enough in the way of resourcing to meet children's needs and particularly those children with additional learning support needs."
However, Ms Grant said a review office report was an excellent idea because it should help make the scale of the problem clearer.
