Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I am grateful to the Ceann Comhairle for giving me the opportunity to raise this important matter. St. Mark's junior and senior national schools have more than 1,000 pupils in their care in an area not designated disadvantaged. The area concerned is a modest private housing estate of approximately 2,000 houses, a very high proportion of which are privately rented. A large number of these privately rented houses are leased to immigrant families whose children comprise 48% of the junior school. The junior school, for example, has 258 children for whom English is not their first language. Recently the junior school got sanction for six language support teachers, four of whom will not be re-employed under the Minister for Finance's budget announcement.

Some 258 newcomer children in a school with an enrolment of 536 has placed a huge responsibility on the school, a challenge which the teachers have taken up with very considerable success and evolved best practice with little help in the matter of guidelines from the Department. It seems to be unpopular with some outside commentators to highlight that if a school is inadequately resourced to cope with the language difficulties of newcomer pupils this will have a seriously adverse impact on indigenous pupils. Only a year and a half ago St. Mark's junior school won six language support teachers, or one teacher per 43 pupils with a variety of language needs. The Minister proposes to cap such resource teachers at two.

To compound the damage the same school now stands to lose €25,333.93 in grants, money that was used to provide books for necessitous pupils, psychological assessments and so on. This small grant was of immense value. How in the name of heavens does the Minister of State consider that a school like this can cope with this huge proportion of non-national children and at the same time tend to the needs of its indigenous pupils? Before the very recent arrival of the language support teachers and notwithstanding the diligent efforts of the established teachers, numeracy and literacy levels over ten years suffered badly. Despite the scale and novelty of the challenge nobody from the Minister's Department visited the school in over ten years to experience the challenge.

Now as the two schools on the St. Mark's campus are about to get on top of the challenge, the Government proposes to undermine them. Notwithstanding that the St. Mark's schools are not in an area designated disadvantaged, the proportion accessing third level is improving but is still not large enough. There are many young people who do not get to third level and some who do not finish second level. For the Government to attack primary school children as it has done in the budget is indefensible and I ask the Minister to withdraw the reimposition of the ceiling for language support teachers.

I conclude by referring to the statement issued by the teachers. It states:

We are beside ourselves with rage and genuine upset at the body blow that has been dealt to the primary sector by this budget. Everything we have worked for in these schools — and we know we speak for hundreds of principals — is now at risk. We did not get adequate resourcing in the good times and now we will be even further disadvantaged. Does anyone seriously imagine that we can manage with fewer than six language teachers? Even with six, each teacher has an allocation of more than 40 pupils, with a variety of language needs, coming from 37 countries and with a variety of cultural diversity.

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