Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 195: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the amount it would cost for the Government to deliver its promise made in the programme for government in 2002 to reduce class sizes to under 20 pupils for children under nine. [11044/07]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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It is difficult to predict the number of additional posts that will be created because of demographic changes and the uncertainty as to how any increases in enrolment will be spread over individual schools. Schools have flexibility in the way in which they assign pupils and teachers to classes and the Department does not allocate teachers to specific classes or age groups.

However, on the basis of current enrolments, it is estimated that in the order of 2,900 additional mainstream teaching posts would be required to reduce class sizes to under 20 pupils for children under 9 at an estimated salary cost of €174million. Statistics are not compiled on an age basis. It is therefore assumed, for the purpose of providing the information sought by the Deputy, that all of the pupils in junior classes (junior infants to second class inclusive) are under 9 years of age.

Provision of accommodation to cater for these additional teachers would cost in the order of €360m. This does not include provision for the additional costs which would arise if teacher numbers increased in terms of services and training for the additional teachers in the system. This would include the cost of additional inspectors required to carry out inspections (including probation), additional teacher training places required in the teacher education colleges, provision of additional inservice training and the additional administrative costs for the Department of Education and Science associated with processing payment of salary, pension etc for extra teachers. Neither does it include the additional costs on the capital side in terms of ongoing maintenance of any additional classroom accommodation provided.

The salary cost given does not include provision for the necessary pension costs which would increase the salary cost by approximately 25%-30% per annum.