Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There is something fundamentally wrong with the system if there are 5,000 children in classes of 35 or more. This has a direct impact on the amount of their time teachers can give pupils. It impacts on individual students and has a disproportionate impact on weaker students who have learning difficulties and on brighter students who need encouragement to move a bit further on. As a result, such students become bored in their classes for one reason or another, end up disrupting those classes and every single pupil in them suffers as a result. We need to deal with this issue of supersized classes. A specific focus needs to be put on the issue, particularly in the context of Covid-19 and the risk of variants in the future. We need to eradicate these large classes.

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