Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 211: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the extent to which pupil teacher ratios here compare with best practice throughout Europe; her plans to address the issue in early date; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [34144/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Unfortunately up-to-date figures on pupil:teacher ratios across the EU are not available. The most recent OECD 'Education At A Glance' report for example provides figures for 2003/04 which are now considerably out of date and fail to reflect the major increases in primary staffing in particular in Ireland in recent years.

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. 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. Furthermore, the Government is committed to providing even more primary teachers next year to reduce class sizes. As the Deputy knows 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 many schools. Over 280 such posts were sanctioned in the 2006/07 school year, compared to 170 in 2005/06.

Significant improvements have been made also been made in the pupil teacher ratio at post primary level in recent years, to the point that the PTR at second level was just 13.2:1 in the 2005/06 school year. This Government has shown a clear determination to improve the staffing in our schools and we will continue to prioritise this issue going forward.