Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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561. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills further to Parliamentary Question No. 557 of 23 June 2015, requesting information on the number of teachers in the primary school sector teaching in multigrade settings with classes containing three, four, five or more grades, the reason this information is not available; the information held by her Department on the number of multigrade classes; the reason this information is not collated centrally for educational planning purposes; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [26288/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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My Department does not have the information in the format requested by the Deputy in PQ 24961 of 23 June 2015. However my Department does have the following information. Data on the number of classes that have 3, 4 or 5 or more grades and associated number of pupils is attached in table A. Data on the number of schools classified by teacher size is attached in table B. This data shows that in the 2014/2015 academic year there were 39,448 pupils in 2,012 classes with 3 or more grades. The data also shows that there were 26 one teacher-schools in 2014/2015. This refers to total teacher size of the school.

Table A: Number of National School Classes that are Multigrade Classes containing 3 or more Grades

Refers to Mainstream Classes Only 2014/2015

TABLE B— Number of pupils, schools and teachers by Total Teacher-Size of school (mainstream classes only), 2014/2015

Non-teaching Principals are defined as Principals who are not classroom teachers but who may teach for a limited period each week.

Source: National School Annual Census