The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) has claimed that Department of Education figures released today show the Government has failed to tackle large class sizes.
John Carr, general secretary of the primary teachers' union, said: “Almost 100,000 children remain in classes of 30 pupils or more despite year on year promises to tackle the issue.”
Today’s figures show that just over one in ten Irish children is in regular-sized classes of less than 20 pupils, INTO said, adding that classes of 20 or less are internationally accepted as best practice.
“Most of our EU neighbours have achieved this target for all pupils,” said Mr Carr, “not just for 10 per cent of the school population”.
In response, the Department of Education said the recently available statistics for the 2007/08 school year show a cut in the number of large classes, with over 80 per cent of pupils are in classes of fewer than 30 pupils.
A statement from the department added that with over 20,000 classes spread across the State, "there will always be differences in individual class sizes".
But Mr Carr said figures showing 20 per cent of Irish primary pupils in classes of 30 pupils or more provide the clearest evidence of a lack of political will to tackle Ireland’s super-sized classes.
The union claimed that Irish primary school classes are the second most over-crowded in the EU.
Mr Carr said the greatest impact of Government failure on class size is in commuter belts around cities and large towns. He blamed a lack of coherent planning that permitted houses to be built without vital infrastructure such as schools and school extensions as well as the failure to extend existing schools.
“This coupled with the failure to provide teachers for class size reductions means that in these counties particularly, huge numbers of children are in super-sized classes where teachers are struggling to implement the curriculum.”
The Department of Education stated that for the 2001/2002 school year, there were some 24,477 wholetime equivalent teaching posts allocated to second-level schools, and that this figure had risen to 25,454 for 2006/2007.
"This increase in staffing has dramatically improved the pupil-teacher ratio," the Department added.
