Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 654: To ask the Minister for Education and Science when she expects to bring pupil/teacher ratios in County Kildare into line with best practice throughout the country, in view of the fact that this is a developing area with unsatisfactory pupil/teacher ratios at present; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [34625/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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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 and there is now one teacher for 17 pupils at primary level, including resource teachers etc.

Children with special needs and those from disadvantaged areas are getting more support than ever before to help them to make the most of their time at school.

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 the above priority areas of disadvantage and special education and also under a reduction in the mainstream staffing schedule.

All primary schools are staffed on a general rule of at least one classroom teacher for every 28 children. Of course, schools with only one or two teachers have much lower staffing ratios than that — with two teachers for just 12 pupils in some cases and so on — but the general rule is that there is at least one classroom teacher for every 28 children in the school. Next year (2007/2008 school year) this is being reduced to 27 children per classroom teacher.

A further initiative that has been of direct benefit to primary schools has been the change in the criteria for developing schools. 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 Kildare. Over 280 such posts were sanctioned in the 2006/07 school year, compared to 170 in 2005/06. I understand that 28 posts of the posts sanctioned for the 2006/07 school year were for the Kildare area.

This Government has shown a clear determination to improve the staffing in our schools and we will continue to prioritise this issue going forward.