Government and opposition at odds over health of education system

A WAR of words has erupted between the government and opposition parties on the eve of a Dáil debate on education.

Education Minister Mary Hanafin launched a pre-emptive strike on critics by claiming credit for Ireland’s most dramatic ever increases in teacher numbers.

Opposition parties have hit back, suggesting that her numbers don’t add up and the Government’s record on education amounts to broken promises, over-crowded schools and children without school places.

The conflicting assessments of Ireland’s education system comes just days before TD’s debate a private members motion on the subject.

Labour’s spokeswoman on education, Jan O’Sullivan, said the Labour Party will call on the Minister to honour the promise made in the Programme for Government to reduce average class sizes for children under the age of nine to 20 or less.

“In some respects the situation has actually worsened in recent years. Figures I obtained last year revealed that the number of primary school children in classes of 30 or more had increased by more than 5,000 in just two years,” she said.

But the Minister said the Government had delivered an extra 5,000 primary school teachers in the last five years alone while the numbers of primary and post-primary teachers together had grown by 10,000 in the past decade.

“The average class size has been reduced from 27 to 24. With all the extra support teachers now in place there is one teacher for every 17 primary school children — down from the one for every 22 students that existed before,” she said.

She added that some counties, such as Meath and Kildare, had seen teacher numbers grow by a third over the past ten years.

School principal and Fine Gael election candidate for Kildare South, Councillor Richard Daly, dismissed the claims and said that Newbridge alone needed two new primary schools to accommodate the growing population of local children.

“The Government solution is three new prefabs in the vocational school car park this September making 18 classes available for junior infants. That is an average of 30 per class, up from the current level of 28.”

Fellow candidate Alan Gillis said 58 four-years-olds were turned away from schools in the area last year and parents were once again vying for junior infant places this year.

“Overcrowded classrooms mean teachers have as little as eight minutes a day on a one to one basis with their pupils,” he said.