Joanna Tuffy (Labour)

The Minister and Senator Ormonde are responding to this motion by blaming the schools. The Minister spoke of an imbalance in schools whereby there are some classes of 16 and others of 35. There could well be a reason for classes of such different size. Different years might be involved. Perhaps the Minister can produce figures to show that for some students in the same year, such differences in class sizes exist. She may be talking of different years. A class might be smaller because of special needs in the class, for example.

Going by the Minister's figures supplied as responses to parliamentary questions, that issue is a red herring. It is quite obvious that the bulk of pupils are in classes of 20 to 24 and 30 to 34. When the issue was raised by teachers in my area as part of the INTO campaign, the basic issue involved classes with about 30 pupils. Most of the schools in my area had class numbers of high 20s and low 30s, and there seemed to be many classes in those size ranges. The Minister is aware of numerous such meetings held during the INTO campaign between local teachers and public representatives. That never happened before. The impression I got from the principals and teachers involved was that they were very concerned about the issue, which was putting them under a lot of pressure in schools. Organising such meetings with public representatives and bringing the issue into the political arena was very much a last resort for teachers.

I do not believe that teachers would not do something themselves about class sizes, if they could. In my local schools, teachers have done everything they can to maximise resources in order to ensure class sizes are not too big. However, they still have class sizes well beyond what would be considered best practice.

The Minister has announced there will be 400 extra teachers in the next couple of years, so she acknowledges the problem. It is good that she has made this announcement. The INTO welcomed it but said that further progress is necessary. That is the message of this debate and of Senator O'Toole's motion. The issue will not go away merely because an announcement was made. People need to see changes on the ground and very little has changed so far.