Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Fine Gael)
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Question 229: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if he will respond to a query (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9412/10]

Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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The primary staffing schedule is currently structured to ensure that all primary schools operate to an average mainstream class size of 28 pupils. While the staffing schedule allocates on the basis of an average number of pupils each individual school decides on how to arrange its classes. In terms of class sizes 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 schools throughout the country there will inevitably be differences in individual class sizes. Some schools can have class sizes of greater than 28 but this is often because of a local decision by a school to use its teaching resources in order to have smaller numbers in other classes.

The renewed Programme for Government commits the Government to no further increase in pupil teacher ratio in primary and second level schools over the lifetime of the Government and provides for 500 teaching posts to schools over the next three years over and above additional posts that will arise due to demographic increases.

One hundred posts have been allocated to each sector, primary and post-primary in the current school year. At primary level posts have been allocated to schools that had increased enrolments in the current school year and which, as a result of last year's pupil-teacher ratio change, lost out on a teaching post in this year by either one, two or three pupils. My Department has contacted the schools in question and in the interest of transparency the list of schools has also been published on my Department's website.

The list will be fully completed when the 30 September 2009 enrolment returns are received from the remaining schools that have not yet submitted them to my Department.

Agreement has also been reached on the allocation of 50 additional posts to the primary sector and 100 to the post-primary sector for the coming school year, 2010/11. At primary level as these posts are additional to those required to cater for demographic growth, some improvement will be made to the staffing schedule for the 2010/11 school year. These improvements will be targeted at medium-to-larger schools typically under the greatest pressure in relation to class sizes.