Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)
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Question 58: To ask the Minister for Education and Science, further to her reply to Parliamentary Questions Nos. 125, 150 and 158 of 2 October 2007, the number of teachers hired since 2004; the number of teachers who have retired since 2004; if the figure includes classroom assistants, laboratory technicians or special needs assistants; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [28460/07]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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3,761 more teachers were employed in primary schools in September 2007 than in September 2004. The allocation of these additional posts improved the pupil teacher ratio from 17.44 in the 2003/2004 school year to 16.41 in the 2006/2007 school year. The additional posts allocated at primary level have been used for

improvements to the staffing schedule to ensure that all primary schools are staffed on the basis of a general rule of at least one classroom teacher for every 27 children in the current school year, down from 1 for every 29 two years ago.

the appointment of administrative principals for schools with Principal and four or five mainstream teachers which also has a specialist autism unit;

the appointment of deputy administrative principals;

allocation of resource teacher posts to either individual schools or to a cluster of schools where a need has been identified;

the introduction of the General Allocation model for deploying learning support/resource teachers in September, 2005 and the allocation of additional learning support/resource teachers;

reducing class sizes under the disadvantaged initiatives;

the allocation of teaching posts to schools where 14 or more pupils with significant English language needs are identified;

improvements in the criteria for the allocation of teaching posts to developing schools; and

119 additional teacher equivalents have been employed in Secondary and Community/ Comprehensive schools and an additional 463 whole time teacher equivalents have been employed in VECs between 2004 and 2007. It should be noted that the number of second level students decreased over the period and that there was one teacher for almost every 13 post-primary pupils in the 2006/07 school year. There were 463 additional WTE teachers for mainstream and PLCs allocated to the VEC sector in that period. 2,732 more special needs assistants were employed in primary schools in September 2007 than in September 2004, while 1,080 more were employed in post-primary schools including Vocational Education Committees.

2,709 primary teachers retired between 2004 and 2007. 2,311 teachers employed in Secondary and Community/ Comprehensive schools also retired. I regret that I do not have the information regarding the numbers of retirees in Vocational Education Committees as it is only available from the individual committees. The numbers of increased posts that I have outlined above are in addition to replacements for the numbers that retired over the period.