Written answers

Wednesday, 20 February 2008

Department of Education and Science

School Staffing

9:00 pm

Photo of Joe McHughJoe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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Question 163: To ask the Minister for Education and Science her views on proposals for classes with more than twenty pupils having a classroom assistant to help both the teacher and the pupils; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [6764/08]

Photo of Mary HanafinMary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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My Department has no plans to introduce classroom assistants for classes with twenty pupils or more. The mainstream teacher allocation of all primary schools, is determined by reference to the enrolment of the school on the 30th September of the previous school year. The staffing schedule is outlined in a circular which is issued annually to all primary schools. In addition such schools may be eligible for additional teacher or special needs assistant allocations in accordance with the criteria for the allocation of special needs resources.

Special needs assistant support in schools is allocated based on the assessed care needs of one or more children with special educational needs. As the Deputy will be aware, major improvements have been made in staffing at primary level in recent years. There are now in the region of 6,000 more primary teachers than there were in 2002. By the 2006/07 school year, we had reduced the average class size in our primary schools to 24, while the pupil teacher ratio was 16.4:1, including resource teachers etc. In that year, schools were staffed on the basis of a general rule of at least one classroom teacher for every 28 children. Given that the national average was 24, many schools benefited from much more favourable staffing ratios than this.

Extra teachers were provided by the Government for the 2007/08 school year to improve primary school staffing so that schools would generally get at least one classroom teacher for every 27 children.

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 improvements we have made in school staffing in recent years are absolutely unparalleled. The Government is committed to providing more teachers to our primary schools over the next five years in order to reduce class sizes. We will also continue our focus on measures to improve the quality of education in our primary schools to ensure that increased resources lead to better outcomes for our children.

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