Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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127. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason it is the case under the staffing ratio for small schools that a school can gain a second teacher with 15 students, but only if the single teacher has children across six or more class groups, the so-called six class adjustment; and if a school that has 15 pupils can gain a second teacher if it has less than this number of classes. [32620/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The criteria used for the allocation of teachers to primary schools is published annually on the website of the Department of Education and Skills. The key factor for determining the level of staffing resources provided at individual school level is the staffing schedule for the relevant school year and pupil enrolments on the previous 30 September.

The staffing arrangements includes a provision where the appointment and retention of the second teacher in a school is set at 15, where the school is 8km or more from the nearest school of the same type of patronage or language of instruction. This compares with an appointment figure of 20 and a retention figure of 19 for other 2 teacher schools.

In addition, the new announcement made in Budget 2017 provides a capacity for one teacher mainland schools to make an appeal to the Staffing Appeals Board for an extra teacher, where the single teacher has children across 6 or more class groups. Before a school can make an appeal to the Staffing Appeals Board it must have a minimum enrolment of 15 pupils.

This is in addition to the measure in respect of island schools. The particular staffing arrangements for island schools are designed to reflect the isolated nature of an island school that is only accessible by boat or by helicopter/aeroplane and the operational and practical difficulties that this can create for the school and, in particular, the availability of teaching staff.

These two measures are important additional supports for rural schools on top of other similar measures introduced recently. However, we have to prioritise limited resources.

The detailed arrangements for this measure including the details on the appeals process will be set out in the staffing schedule Circular for the 2017/18 school year. The Circular will be published in January 2017.