Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

Last year, in the run up to the teachers' conferences, while the crisis in the education system bubbled and boiled to the surface, the former Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Noel Dempsey, hummed and hawed about whether he would attend. When he attended the teachers' conferences, John Carr of the INTO summed up the feeling of its delegates when he said "It's class size Minister". That statement was revisited at this year's teachers' conferences. Class size is the big issue that needs to be tackled and not put in the box of things to do.

The campaign to highlight the failures in Government funding of education needs all our support, not because it is a worthy policy to increase educational investment but because many children's lives are blighted by inadequate school facilities, overcrowded classrooms, unqualified teachers and a system of allocating teachers to schools that is not reflective of the needs of the schools, their students or their principals. We are failing many of our children and their ability to finish school is being undermined. One in five students who progress to secondary school never complete a State examination. Many students leave school with little or no literacy or writing skills. There is a variety of reasons for this but class size and an education system which fails to adapt to the needs of the individual pupil is at the core of the problem.

The Government has produced reports stating the child-teacher ratio for children under nine years should be 20:1. These reports have been coming out for three years but we have seen no real action. A school must have 46 students to retain two teachers. Children over nine years often need smaller classes too because when they go into larger classes, they often lose the benefit they have gained.

The new "weighted system" for special needs students will require 1,000 additional teachers. Only 350 of these have been provided so far. Schools are in a "no man's land" because the old system has been abolished but the new system is not in place. Special needs students in mainstream schools get one hour of special education a day if they are lucky. Some parents want to get their children into these schools so badly that they play down the level of special education their children will need. The limit of one resource teacher per 150 pupils needs to be examined and children with special needs should have a seamless transfer of their supports throughout their educational life. It is not happening at the moment.

Deputy O'Connor talked about schools in my constituency and my local school and he outlined that the system is failing the children in these schools, their parents, teachers and the principals. My local school is on the edge of a RAPID area and has children from clearly disadvantaged backgrounds but is not considered a disadvantaged school by the Department of Education and Science.

Like others, I eagerly await the Minister of State's response. We read daily about ever better reports on Exchequer finances. Let us spend some of this money on our children in an efficient and equitable way. We have the cohort of teachers coming on stream and the finances in our economy. What we seem to lack is consistency and the political will to follow through.

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