Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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I am pleased that the Minister for Education and Skills is here in person to take this Topical Issue, which concerns the shortfall in the school capitation grant for primary schools. The Minister is very aware of the situation. The capitation grant used to be €200 and was cut to €170 some time ago leaving a very serious shortfall in the funding for our primary schools throughout the country. With the increased expenditure in the past couple of years, one would have expected that there would have been some move to restore it to the previous level. It is very disappointing that there has been no such improvement in the two budgets to date despite a commitment that this would happen in the programme for Government.

As we all know, there are over 500,000 children in well over 3,000 primary schools around the country. I do not think there is any match between the capitation grant and the cost of running the school. It has resulted in schools having to provide in the order of €50 million through fundraising and other efforts just to keep the school open in terms of light, heat, electricity and insurance and to make it a safe place for the students to learn in and for teachers to teach in. Many people have contacted us about this issue. I believe that in the forthcoming budget, the Minister must start a process of restoring this grant as much as possible as quickly as possible. I will deal with other issues relevant to primary education such as class sizes, leadership, the situation of teaching principals, teacher supply panels and above all, ending the pay inequality that is still rampant in the primary school sector during my second opportunity to speak. My primary issue is to raise capitation grants for small schools with the Minister. It is more severe in small schools where the cost of keeping the building up and running to a safe standard is an enormous burden at local level. I ask the Minister to address this by way of a significant increase in the forthcoming budget.

Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein)
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I also want to raise the issue of the capitation grant. The cut in this grant is having a severe impact on schools. The amount was €200 and if my memory serves me right and it was cut in 2008 and now stands at €170 per pupil. This has cost schools an estimated €105 million per annum and has left parents to engage in fundraising. Last year, the figure raised by parents through raffles, cake sales and race nights was €46 million. It is not sustainable in the long term. Parents are also making a contribution for basic items, which is putting huge pressure on them, particularly on low and middle-income families. These contributions come on top of paying for uniforms, books, tablets and extracurricular activities. Boards of management tell us that they are struggling to keep heat going and lights on. Earlier this week, Deputy Fleming, the Minister for Justice and Equality and I met with representatives of the boards of management of Catholic schools. Today, we met with the INTO. Both bodies outlined graphically to us the pressures they are under financially. The INTO has calculated that a €20 increase in the capitation grant per head per annum bringing the capitation grant to €190 would cost €12 million. That would have been a huge sum of money at one time and I know money must be found somewhere for everything but it is not a massive sum of money in terms of the budget in today's money. The public finances are in better shape. I ask the Government to look at that this year. I will discuss the minor works grant and class sizes during the second part of my contribution but could the Minister address specifically the issue of the capitation?

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputies for raising this issue and for their interest in the education area. Reading between the lines of what they have said, they can understand the difficulties I am facing. They mentioned pay restoration, time off for principals, investment in leadership, minor works and smaller class sizes. These are all needs I would like to be able to address. This year, I had €550 million across all education budgets. Half of that money - €240 million - went on pay restoration so that was the first thing. That was partly contributing to the restoration of pay for new entrants and, of course, the general increases in pay. I paid out the minor works grant last year. That comes to €5,000 for every school plus €18 per head on top of that.

There is no doubt that starting to put money back into capitation grants is something I have the ambition to do but I must set priorities. To be honest, the priorities I set were reducing class sizes, providing 1,500 additional teachers for children with special educational needs and starting the investment in school leadership. I have made a significant investment. A total of 1,000 principals this year will get support. I have also made provision this year for more time off for those principals in smaller schools. Depending on the size of the school, I have added between two and four days extra time off to allow those principals time to plan. In addition, there will be 50 clusters where schools can combine to employ one person who would be available to avoid the problem of finding substitution by those principals. That would be relevant, particularly in areas with a more dispersed population. Capitation is in two parts currently.

There is €170 per pupil, plus a further ancillary payment of €153 per pupil. The ancillary payment has gone up by €16, which reflects salary increases in arbitration awards, but the overall base amount has not gone up. I have also made other changes designed to help schools to better manage their resources. For example, the schools procurement unit has saved some €2 million per year across all schools in each of the last three years. Total capitation payments to primary schools amount to some €205 million and the payment is making a significant contribution to addressing costs.

I have dealt with the issue of voluntary contributions. It is important to point out that such contributions must be voluntary and that there cannot be compulsion to pay for mainstream activities.

I believe the Deputies appreciate that we are recovering from a difficult time. I have to make choices and believe most Deputies would defend the choices I made to reduce class sizes in primary schools, start the process of restoring pay for newly qualified entrants and make particular provision for children with special needs, a measure which has involved nearly 3,000 additional SNAs. Overall, over 6,000 additional teachers have been provided and supported in the last couple of years. Moreover, we are seeking to meet these needs at a time when there is a rapidly growing school population.

Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for his presence and constructive approach to this issue. I know that we have thrown a myriad of demands at him and that they cannot all be met in one budget. With regard to capitation grants, the Minister replied to a parliamentary question I asked last week by stating it was difficult to make precise comparisons between the levels of grants and the actual cost of running schools at primary and secondary level. Therefore, there is an indication that everyone within the system knows that the capitation grant does not meet the cost of running a school.

I mentioned the pupil-teacher ratio. We pushed the issue last year and, with our support, a reduction from 26 to 25 was achieved. The INTO told us earlier today that in the next five or six years there might be up to 50,000 fewer pupils in primary schools. Therefore, the Government might be able to make progress on the the issue of the pupil-teacher ratio without any significant increase in cost.

Boards of management are looking for the capitation grant to be restored, as well as the minor works grant. They are very reasonable in what they say to us in that they want a guaranteed but phased programme. While we all know that it will not happen in one budget, we want the Minister to take some steps along the road on this occasion and give a commitment to follow through.

Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister for his reply. I note that some progress has been made and we welcome the reduction of one in the average class size, although in our budget submission we proposed a reduction of two. We have the second highest class sizes in the European Union, at an average of 25, with the European Union as a whole having an average class size of 20; therefore, there is more work to do. I also understand everything cannot be done in one year, but the capitation grant needs to cover the cost of running a school. We need to go further in that regard. While I do not expect the Minister to announce the budget today and know that he has to make the argument at the Cabinet table, I urge him to make it again this year and go a step further in providing for a reduction in class sizes. It is a work in progress and we need to push on. The Minister should also have another look at the minor works grants to see what could be done in that regard. I ask that the first two areas - capitation payments and class sizes - be prioritised. It would be very welcome to build on the progress which has been made.

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I am sympathetic to what the Deputies are saying. The one thing I would say in this debate about what we should do in education is that we need to focus on outcomes for children. The debate in this House too often is about pupil-teacher ratios and capitation grants, which are all about outputs. One of the things I am proud to stand over is that, in the teeth of what was probably the worst recession the country had ever seen, we increased the number of ASD units from 540 to 1,304, or by an 750 additional. The units have transformed opportunities for children and we are now seeing the highest ever proportion of children stay on in school to complete their education. Ten year olds are best at reading and mathematics. The reason this is the case is that we invested specifically in supporting literacy initiatives, reforming the curriculum and supporting teachers with both leadership and, as they call it, CPD, or continuous professional development courses in order that they could make an impact in the classroom. We have put money into SNAs which has seen children progress in education who in the past were overlooked. We need to talk about the impact on children's lives, as well as the ratios about which people tend to talk. While we are doing well in all of these areas, we need to do better. I am keen to see money going into innovation, supporting clusters, looking at DEIS schools and how we can do better in achieving better outcomes, as well as closing the literacy gap between a DEIS and a non-DEIS school. We need to think more imaginatively, rather than always just looking at the crude input per head measures and instead focus on how we can make a real impact in the success of a child. That is why it is more complicated than just spreading the money thinly across the system. We are trying to make a difference with some of the interventions we are choosing to make.