Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 1351: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if she will review enrolment policy in respect of primary schools in County Kildare which in areas of population growth militates against an improvement in pupil/teachers ratios; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [29488/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Enrolment in individual schools is the responsibility of the managerial authority of those schools and my Department does not seek to intervene in decisions made by schools in such matters. My Department's main responsibility is to ensure that schools in an area can, between them, cater for all pupils seeking places. This may result, however, in some pupils not obtaining a place in the school of their first choice.

It is the responsibility of the managerial authorities of schools that are not in a position to admit all pupils seeking entry to implement an enrolment policy in accordance with the Education Act. In this regard a board of management may find it necessary to restrict enrolment to children from a particular area or a particular age group or, occasionally, on the basis of some other criterion. In formulating an admissions policy a school must, however, ensure it is lawful. In particular, it must act in accordance with section 7 of the Equal Status Act 2000 which, subject to very limited exceptions, prohibits schools from discriminating against people in relation to a number of matters including the admission or the terms or conditions of admission of a person as a student to the school.

As the Deputy will be aware, major improvements have been made in staffing at primary level in recent years. At the beginning of the current school year there are no less than 4000 extra teachers in our primary schools compared with 2002. The average class size in our primary schools is 24, but there is now one teacher for 17 pupils at primary level — including resource teachers etc. Indeed, with the thousands of extra primary teachers hired by this Government, recent years have seen the largest expansion in teacher numbers since the expansion of free education. Over the next two school years even more teachers will be put in place both for priority areas of disadvantage and special education and also under a reduction in the mainstream staffing schedule.

Under the staffing arrangements for primary schools, there is provision for the allocation of an additional post to a school where the school experiences rapid growth in its enrolment. In such cases, an additional post, referred to as a developing school post, may be sanctioned provisionally where the projected enrolment at 30th September of the school year in question equals or exceeds a specified figure. If the specified figure is not achieved on 30th September, sanction for the post is withdrawn.

For the current school year the threshold for getting a developing school post was reduced specifically to help schools that are seeing large increases in enrolments each year, as is the case in areas of rapidly increasing population such as County Kildare. 170 such posts have been sanctioned in the 2005/06 school year, compared to 105 in 2004/05. This Government has shown a clear determination to improve the staffing in our schools and we will continue to prioritise this issue going forward.