Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Question 377: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the cost to the Exchequer in 2007 of allowing primary schools to appoint their extra allocated teacher in the 2007/2008 school year rather than in the 2008/2009 school year as is currently the case. [34820/07]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The mainstream staffing of a primary school is determined by reference to the valid enrolment of the school on 30th September of the previous school year and the staffing schedule which is issued annually to all primary schools.

If the current staffing schedule were to be applied to all primary schools based on the provisional enrolment figures of the 30th September 2007, forwarded to my Department by the Boards of Management of primary schools, it is estimated that it would give rise to a cost of €11.3 million in 2007 and a full year estimate of €34 million.

While primary schools are generally staffed on the basis of their enrolments in the September of the previous year a further initiative in recent years 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. Over 330 such posts have been sanctioned in the 2007/08 school year compared to 280 in 2006/07.

The Deputy should also note that if the mainstream staffing in a school was based on current enrolment figures, some schools would lose a teacher immediately rather than being able to hold them for a year as is the present arrangement.