Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, Deputy Seán Haughey. I wish to ask the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, to review the unique staffing position at Claddaghduff national school in north Connemara. This three-teacher rural school has been informed it will lose one teacher from September 2009 as a result of being one pupil short, a situation arising from the revised pupil-teacher ratios. It is a desperate situation for a school to go from three teachers to two teachers.

On 30 September 2008, Claddaghduff national school had a total of 48 children on the roll, the exact number needed to retain its three teachers. As the Minister of State knows, the staffing schedule for next year will be determined by the number of children in place in September 2008. However, the Minister, in his wisdom, changed the capitation number to 49 children when he increased the pupil-teacher ratio and backdated that to be effective from 30 September last. As a result of the goalposts moving, the school stands to lose a teacher. A letter was received to that effect on 13 February last advising that Ms Eileen O'Malley will be lost to the school and will have to go onto a panel for a new position at another school as it becomes available.

In 2007, Claddaghduff national school was completely revamped and rebuilt at a cost of approximately €300,000, much of which was granted by the Department. The children moved back into the school in September 2007 and have been enjoying these facilities since then. The parents' association was very proactive, and still is, in fundraising for extra curricular activities and all the teaching staff are dedicated and hardworking.

It seems one of these new classrooms will lie empty and the children will be divided between the two remaining teachers. That means four classes per teacher. As an educator, I know that is a huge drop in educational input into the children, that is, to have four classes and four years of an age cohort per teacher when they are used to three teachers. The school may be short one pupil for the year ending 30 September 2008 but the projected figures for future years show numbers will be maintained in or around 50 plus.

Given the drop in pupil numbers by one, the school will lose a teacher for one year but it may be in a position to get a teacher back within a year or two. Can the Minister of State do something for this school in these circumstances? It is worth noting the school is a designated disadvantaged school but it seems grants and major funding are going to urban schools at this time and that this rural school is being left out in the cold.

A parent stated:

It is difficult enough to think that our children will have to leave their homeplace in search of work in other parts of the country in future years but to think that they are now being deprived of a teacher by such "a callous turn of events", a "U- turn" call it what you want — we feel this is grossly unfair.

The parents have asked me to relay this issue to the Minister and to put it to him that there must be some way in which an exception can be made on the grounds the school had the correct number of pupils on the original date, 30 September 2008.

Claddaghduff national school is the only one in the whole of north-west Connemara to be in this position of losing a full-time, permanent teacher. Having taught in a rural school — a four-teacher rural school — which was reduced to a three-teacher school when I was redeployed through the panel, I know the loss this is to the community and to the children. There is great concern that it may never get the teacher back if the Minister who puts buildings before pupils and teachers continues with these cuts in what one would call the real relationship builder between the teacher and the pupil. Can the Minister of State intervene so this teacher will be kept? I look forward to his response.