Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

It is anticipated that at least 500 additional teaching posts will be created in the coming school year, 2006-07. These extra posts will be as a result of both Government announcements of extra staff to reduce class size and to tackle disadvantage, and of our commitment to provide extra teachers as needed to support children with special needs and those for whom English is not their first language.

The Deputy will be aware that primary schools are staffed on the basis of a general rule that there is at least one classroom teacher for every 29 pupils in the school. Of course, schools with only one or two teachers have much lower staffing ratios than that, with two teachers for just 12 pupils in some cases. At the time of the 2006 Estimates, I announced that for the coming school year this will be reduced to 28 children per classroom teacher and that for the 2007-08 school year it will be reduced to 27 children per classroom teacher.

The new and improved staffing schedule for the next school year issued to schools recently. The application of the new schedule, together with increases in enrolments at primary level, is expected to result in approximately 240 additional teaching posts for the coming school year. In addition, the terms of the current staffing arrangements for primary schools provide for extra posts, referred to as developing school posts, to be assigned to schools on the basis of projected enrolments for the following school year. These have also been allocated more generously this year. It is not possible to state with certainty the number of such posts which will be allocated for the coming school year. However, I estimate it will be approximately 150 posts.

Two other areas driven by need are teaching support for children with special needs and language support for students whose first language is not English at both primary and post-primary levels. The number of teachers in our schools working specifically with children with special needs has grown substantially in recent years. Approximately 5,000 teachers in our primary schools now work directly with children with special needs, including those requiring learning support, compared to 1,500 in 1998. The number of language support teachers at primary and post-primary level increased substantially to the tune of more than 100 extra posts annually in recent years. In the areas of support for children with special needs and those whose first language is not English it is difficult to estimate exactly how many extra teachers will be needed in the next school year.

Regarding support for children from disadvantaged areas, the Deputy is aware that last year I launched a new action plan for tackling disadvantage, DEIS, one aspect of which will be more staffing for the most disadvantaged schools. The plan provides for an extra 300 posts across the education system over the course of a five year period. Some of these are teaching posts and others are support staff. I expect that approximately 150 extra teaching posts will have been created in primary and post-primary schools by the end of the next school year under the DEIS plan. Taken together, next year will yet again see a considerable increase of approximately 500 extra teachers in the level of staffing in our schools.

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