Ensure enough qualified personnel at autism centres, say academics
Any move to open more dedicated autism education centres must come with a plan to ensure that there are enough qualified personnel, according to academics and experts.
For a start, Lau Choo Ying of Sunway University pointed out, building more schools without increasing the number of teachers is inadequate.
Meanwhile her colleague Audrey Ooi emphasised the need to qualify the term “trained” to differentiate the professionals with those who only shadow a senior staff, a concern shared by Malaysian Association of Behaviour Analysis (Maba) president Alexa Goh.
Lau, who is a programme leader for the Master of Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), said there is still a significant gap between the number of trained therapists and teachers, and that of schools. “This is a concern expressed regularly by…
