Teaching Matters VALERIE MONAGHANThe make-up of the primary school classroom and what goes on there has changed radically, particularly in recent years. Even those who have not stepped inside a classroom since their own schooldays can hardly have failed to notice this.

Gone forever are the days when all the children in a typical classroom were Irish-born, English-speaking and of roughly the same academic ability. Most modern classrooms now have children from other lands, many of whom have little or no English. In addition, there are a number of children with special educational needs in almost every classroom.

Children of different family backgrounds sit side by side in our schools. There is a new curriculum which is based on best international practice. It is relevant because there are new subjects such as primary science and social personal and health education.

Computers are an increasing feature of the everyday life in the classroom. Parents are increasingly involved as partners in the education of their children.

All of this change should be welcome. Primary schools must not only reflect our changing society but must be one of the main ways in which the Ireland of tomorrow is shaped. The foundations of our economic and social futures are being laid in the classrooms of today.

From that perspective you could be forgiven for thinking that we are set for a bright future. But closer examination of this Alice in Wonderland world gives real cause for concern. While practically every element of classroom life has changed radically, the aspect that has changed least in the last few years is the number of children in each class.

Over a quarter of our children now sit in classrooms with 30 other children. Half our children share a classroom with between 20 and 29 others. In simple terms, that means that each child in those rooms gets one thirtieth of teacher time.

Imagine for a minute that you are an eight-year-old waiting for the teacher to hear your piece of reading that you practised at home the night before. You know that she has to listen to 30 others before you get your couple of minutes. Yes you have an activity to do, and often you need a little help with that, but the teacher is with someone else. So you wait for the chance to get help, not knowing that this will of course postpone those precious moments of one-to-one reading time.

God help you on the day, and it happens regularly, when the teacher has to speak to a parent who calls about someone bullying someone. Teacher then has to drop everything and find out who did what, to whom, and when. Then there are the days when there's an accident and teacher has to administer first aid. There are days when teacher never gets the chance to hear your reading. It's hard to avoid the conclusion, that for all the adults say about it, reading isn't all that important. After all, if it were, surely you wouldn't have to wait so long. And of course it's the same for maths.

The computer was supposed to be a help in this regard and give our little eight-year-olds something different to do at times like this. But how much does the single computer in the classroom really feature in life when you share it with 30 others? And that's to say nothing about the days when it's not working and the school is waiting for a technician.

That's the main reason we need smaller classes in our primary schools. A significant reduction, of the kind promised by this Government when it took office, would mean each child getting more teacher time and more time with key resources such as the computer. It would mean that classes would be less noisy, calmer places where each individual child would have a far better chance of having their needs met. Teachers would be able to deal with the emergency-type incidents that crop up every day.

Successive governments have known this but for years told the people that because we were a poor country we couldn't afford to keep up with our wealthier neighbours when it came to investing in our children. Of course, there were regular promises that when things got better, when resources permitted, that things would get better.

Ten years ago the then minister for education, Mícheál Martin, said, "The basic resource in education is the interaction between the teacher and the child . . . therefore it is the degree to which we resource that interaction that is the key to our success in education." After a decade of unprecedented economic growth and progress it is hard to believe that we have the second highest class sizes in the EU. When you consider that we are one of the wealthiest EU countries, that's some level of underperformance and neglect.

Yes we are a wealthy country, but then Scrooge had money too!

Five years ago we had this Government promising to reduce class sizes for the under-nines to less than 20. This wasn't a pre-election promise, made to be forgotten after the election. It was part of the Programme for Government. Today, 75 per cent of children are in classes of more than 20, and with more than a quarter of all pupils in classes of more than 30, it is clear that the Government has failed to resource success in primary education.

Yes, we have a budget surplus but do our primary school children, or their parents, understand why they are waiting to be heard in their overcrowded classrooms?

Valerie Monaghan is principal of Scoil Chiarán, Glasnevin, Dublin and a member of the INTO principals and deputy principals committee