Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 177: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the extent to which his attention has been drawn to classroom overcrowding at the present time; the action he proposes to take to address this issue in early date; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19515/09]

Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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The Forward Planning Section of my Department is in the process of identifying the areas where significant additional accommodation will be required at primary and post-primary level for future school years. Factors under consideration include population growth, demographic trends, current and projected enrolments, recent and planned housing developments and capacity of existing schools to meet demand for places. Having considered these factors, decisions will be taken on the means by which emerging needs will be met within an area. In terms of class sizes, almost 80% of primary pupils were in classes of less than 30 pupils during the last school year. With over 20,000 individual classes spread across all primary schools throughout the country, there will always be differences in individual class sizes. Some schools can have class sizes of greater than 27 or 28 but this is often because of a local decision by a school to use its teaching resources to have smaller numbers in other classes. Indeed, when a particular school has a class of over 30 in a particular grade, it is often because there is another class in the same school with just 20 pupils or so. I appreciate that an even distribution and splitting classes may not always be an option for a particular school, because for example there might be a large group in junior infants and a small group in sixth class and so on. Where possible, I believe that principals should consider the benefits of having smaller multi-grade classes as against having particularly large differences in class sizes at different levels in the school.