Martin Ferris (Kerry North, Sinn Fein)
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Question 84: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if she will reduce the pupil/teacher ratio in 2009; and if so, the amount by which it will be reduced. [13261/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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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 extra teachers provided in the current school year and also the additional primary teachers planned for 2008/09 will mean this Government will be well ahead of target in relation to the Programme for Government commitment to hire 4,000 extra primary teachers between 2007 and 2012.

Over the lifetime of the Government, we are committed to providing more primary school teachers specifically 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.