asked the Minister for Education if he will state the number of married women who are employed as teachers in (a) secondary and (b) vocational schools.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Married Women Teachers.
41.
1,099 married women are employed as recognised teachers in secondary schools.
There are 434 married women employed as whole-time teachers in vocational schools and 355 as part-time teachers.
The Department has no information as to the marital status of part-time teachers in secondary schools.
Could I ask the Minister if he is satisfied with that level of expenditure and if he is satisfied with a situation where no information at all exists about the use of audio-visual aids in primary schools, which seems an extraordinary state of affairs in 1972? The figures he quotes—£25,000 for secondary schools and £17,000 for primary schools—are very small. Has he any plans to increase this?
These schemes have been introduced relatively recently and we have been increasing the amounts of money being made available for the purpose of audio-visual aids. One of the reasons why we have not got the information in relation to primary schools is that the scheme of grants was introduced only last year.
Is the Minister aware that the main reason why some national schools are not able to install audio-visual aids is that there are no facilities available in the school for their installation—for instance, there is no special room available into which to put these audio-visual aids—and that this will hamper the expansion of this idea?
I do not think it will hamper it. We can be proud of the manner in which we have been making available special rooms, new schools and so on in recent years.
The remaining questions will appear on tomorrow's Order Paper.