Children with special needs tend to like school less than their peers without special needs, new research by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has found.

Currently, some €1.3 billion is spent on special education - this is around 15% of the Department of Education's entire budget. Since 2004, major changes have taken place in the area, including a big rise in the number of children with special needs attending mainstream schools.

However according to the ESRI researchers, little is known about the effectiveness of sending children with special needs to mainstream schools ‘in terms of students' social integration and their wider engagement in school'.

They decided to investigate this further. They used data from the Growing Up In Ireland Study - an ongoing study of children in Ireland - to assess the experiences of children with special needs in mainstream schools.

They looked at over 8,500 nine-year-olds, 14% of whom were classed by their teachers as having some sort of special need. These special needs included learning disabilities, physical disabilities, speech problems and emotional behavioural difficulties (EBD) such as ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).

"This unique data source provides, for the first time, a comparison between children with special needs in mainstream and their non-disabled peers," the researchers said.

They found that overall, children, whether they have special needs or not, are ‘broadly positive' about school. However, children with special needs tended to like school less than their peers without special needs.

Just 7% of children without special needs said that they ‘never like school'. However, among children with special needs, this figure rose to 12%.

The researchers found that a child's experiences in school depended on the type of disability or need they had. For example, those with EBD and learning difficulties tended to like school less than children with physical or sensory disabilities.

In fact, children with with physical or sensory disabilities, and those with speech impairments, were ‘no more likely to dislike school than children with no reported special need'.

"This suggests that children with learning disabilities face an additional barrier in integrating into school life," they noted.

Furthermore, in line with past studies on boys in school, the findings indicate that boys with special needs are more likely to dislike school than girls with special needs.

"Moreover, children with special needs from semi and unskilled social class backgrounds are also more likely to be disengaged from school," they said.

The researchers aimed to understand why children with special needs disliked school more. They found that academic engagement had an important role to play. This looks at things such as how often a child does not complete their homework and whether they like the two core subjects of reading and maths.

The findings indicate that children who regularly failed to complete homework and who disliked maths and reading were much more likely to dislike school.

Children with special needs were also more inclined to dislike school if they had a poor relationship with their teachers and their peers.

According to the researchers, inclusion ‘cannot simply be a change in location from special to mainstream schools, but something which involves a broader examination of the current school curriculum, methods of teaching and school climate'.

"In policy terms, this research shows that despite the inclusive education strategy incorporated within the primary curriculum, its academic orientation plays a central role in shaping how children with special needs experience school," they added.

Details of these findings are published in the European Journal of Special Needs Education.