Minister defends progress on primary class sizes
- Published: 09 September 2008
By Ralph Riegel and Aine Kerr
GOVERNMENT pledges to reduce class sizes remain on target, the Education Minister claimed yesterday amid controversy over current pupil-teacher ratios.
But Batt O'Keeffe conceded the pace at which future class-size reductions were achieved would be entirely dependent on the resources available to his department.
"I have finite resources and I will continue to improve the pupil-teacher ratio, but I can only do that within the confines of the budget that is available to me," he said. "In my view, we have been making an outstanding contribution to ensure that pupil-teacher ratios are improving."
His robust defence followed an analysis of pupil-teacher ratios by the Irish Independent yesterday which showed that the minister's own constituency of Cork fared worst of all.
In the breakdown of national figures, Cork had 27pc of primary pupils in classes of 30 or more pupils.
Last night, Fine Gael's Brian Hayes claimed Mr O'Keeffe was simply "a patsy" in the department.
Promises
"I've absolutely zero confidence in Batt O'Keeffe's ability to stick to his promises and the Fianna Fail promises made in the last election. It's becoming quite clear that he is going to hang in there and simply ignore the promises that were made," he said.
The Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) reiterated its claim that that Irish primary school classes were the second-most overcrowded in the EU.
However, Mr O'Keeffe said INTO was not comparing like with like.
"That is the problem with some statistics. The reality is that 80pc of children in this country are in classes of less than 30 pupils; but then you have some classes that don't even have 20 pupils in it. Citing a statistic like that is not fair and balanced," he said.
He insisted that the achievements to date were "unprecedented".
"I want to work with INTO -- we are partners in education. I also want them to be realistic in terms of what we can achieve together and how we can work together," he said.
Mr O'Keeffe pointed out that the national percentage of children in classes of more than 30 had fallen from 25pc in 2006, to 20pc last year.
He also dismissed suggestions that there was an "eastern seaboard" bias in the allocation of resources and that rural and commuter-belt schools had suffered. "That is simply not the case," he said.
