Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)
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I apologise for my late arrival and thank the Minister for attending to take the Adjournment matter I have tabled. Dublin's growing multiculturalism has brought with it many new challenges for the school system. Today many schools have students on their books for whom English is not the mother tongue. For those children to reach their potential in the education system, they need extra help with written and spoken English.

The current Department of Education and Science regulations are very unfair when it comes to awarding extra resources to schools with non-national pupils. Under that system, primary and secondary schools with more than 14 non-English speaking pupils are awarded a temporary teacher to assist them with their language. Schools with 28 or more non-English speaking students are sanctioned two temporary teachers.

Those regulations take no account of the fact that many schools have significantly more than 28 pupils from non-English speaking backgrounds. I will deal specifically with a case in my area with which I am aware the Minister is familiar because she has made complimentary remarks about the work of the school. I refer to St. Mark's senior and junior schools in Springfield. There are 200 international students in the junior school. In the senior school there are 140 students from an international background. Of the total school population, 35% is made up of international students. This is an acute issue that must be resolved in terms of additional support.

The Minister stated previously that only in exceptional cases will she allocate a third language support teacher to any given school but that is unfair to those schools with a substantial international student population base. It is unfair and unreasonable to give the same level of support to a school with 28 international children as a school with 128 such children.

Our schools need a new system of allocation for language support teachers that takes account of the total number of non-English speaking students enrolled, their needs and the needs of the school as a whole. A graduated system should be introduced where schools with more students from an international background are given more resources to assist those children. Language support teachers play a vital role in our education system. For children who have poor written or spoken English, the support of a language teacher can help them fast-track their knowledge of English and ensure they make the most of their education experience in this country.

I ask the Minister to examine this issue again. When I raised it before the Christmas break, the view of her Department was that it was examining this issue. I believe the Minister recognises that there are some hard cases in terms of the total number of international students in those particular schools. I would be grateful if the Minster could clarify her thinking on this issue with a view to making progress from this point.

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Senator Brian Hayes for raising this matter again. I am aware he has a personal interest in it. Everybody in education has an interest in this area because one of the features of the changing face of our schools is the profile of the school, the languages spoken in the school, the backgrounds of the students and the colour in the schools, which makes them very different places to visit than perhaps they would have been in the past. That creates new challenges for schools and for me, as Minister for Education and Science. It is a policy that must be constantly changed and updated because of the degree to which the situation is changing.

It is interesting to note that in the current school year, the Department of Education and Science provided 541 language support teachers at primary level and 261 at second level. That is approximately 800 teachers whose sole job is to teach English to students for whom English is not their first language. That alone cost €46 million, although I know Senator Brian Hayes is not questioning the commitment to providing the resources and giving support but it certainly reflects the number of non-English speaking students in the school.

The number of non-English speaking students in a school is not the same as the number of non-nationals in a school because many of them may have fluent English and would not require this service. It is broken down in two ways. Schools with 14 or more qualifying pupils get an additional full-time, temporary teacher, 28 get two or more and, depending on the circumstances, a third post may be allocated. Schools with a huge proportion of qualifying pupils have got extra teachers. Primary schools who have between three and 13 non-English speaking pupils receive grant assistance of €6,348.69, however they worked out that figure, while schools with between nine and 13 such pupils receive grant assistance of €9,523. A total of 425 primary schools will get support under that scheme this year, which means that a huge number of schools throughout the country are benefiting from this.

Sometimes we tend to think that this support is concentrated in the larger urban areas, and particularly in Dublin. Where there are fewer than 14 non-national pupils with significant English language difficulties, additional teaching hours ranging from three hours per week in respect of one such pupil to 19.5 in respect of 13 pupils are sanctioned. An allocation of two years' language support for each pupil is provided in my Department.

On Tuesday I launched a report on reading levels in our schools. The reading standard continues to be very high but one point raised was that non-national students who have a poor reading and literacy rate in first class had caught up by fifth class, which is a tribute to the schools and the teachers. That sells its own message in terms of the language and the financial support that is going with it, but it is also more than that because all teachers have a role in supporting students to acquire the necessary language skills in the context of each subject being taught. The purpose of the language support is to acquire sufficient language skills to enable students engage with the curriculum rather than to develop a particular level of competence in the English language. Specific language support provision is intended to complement other support provided such as resource teachers, learning support and other ex-quota posts.

Having spoken with the principals and teachers involved in this area, they say that while there may be an issue about the teaching of the language in the school, there is a bigger difficulty in that English is not spoken by the parents in the home. There is a need for more support for those parents in the language. We are trying to look at it in the broader context to determine how the children can be supported outside the school by way of their families getting support also.

Teachers are provided with in-service training through Integrate Ireland Language and Training Limited, which provides training seminars for language support teachers, part-time or whole-time, along with classroom materials including the European language portfolio, to assist them in meeting the English language needs of their pupils-students. It also develops classroom materials in partnership with practising classroom teachers. Grant supports to provide training and resources for teachers and language tuition for refugees is currently of the order of €1.4 million, making a total of €47.5 million. A further additional resource is available to teachers in the form of guidelines on teaching English as an additional language. These guidelines are available on the NCCA website.

A comprehensive mix of supports has been put in place by the Government to ensure that the increasing number of non-English speaking students in our schools get all the extra help they need but we are conscious of the schools that have a large proportion of non-English speaking students. We have been getting information on that and the Department has been meeting with some of those schools to determine the extra supports they need which, as they have identified, are not all in the language teaching area. It may be a case of having to look at the broader context in terms of the family, etc. We will work on that to ensure that the investment we are making is getting the right results and giving the correct supports to those schools but it is under immediate and ongoing review to ensure the schools get the help they need.

Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for her comprehensive reply. Perhaps following this debate she would be good enough to ask officials in her Department to contact the two schools to which I have referred, St. Mark's senior and junior schools, regarding their current specific problem. I appreciate what the Minister said in terms of the commitment in this area but sometimes what is termed the "one size fits all" approach militates against certain schools with a substantial non-English speaking background population. Perhaps an official could speak with the schools I have referred to, which have 340 international pupils and five English language support teachers in comparison to other schools which may have two or three with a much smaller international student base. That is the point I am making but I appreciate the Minister's reply.