I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I want the Minister for Education and Science to ensure the retention of the eleventh assistant teacher in St. Catherine's girls' national school, Cabra, on an ex-quota or other basis.
This is the time of year when schools find out whether they will retain or lose staff, depending on enrolments. If enrolments rise, a school may gain teachers, if they are static the school is fine and if they drop the school loses out. The system is quite arbitrary, given that it is based on enrolment figures on 30 September of the previous year. Even if the school's enrolments rise in the following 12 months they lose out if the numbers are not right on 30 September.
St. Catherine's was two pupils short on that date. It had 298 pupils instead of 300 but it has 301 at present and there are 308 pupils enrolled for next September, so the school's numbers are clearly in excess of the number required for the retention of the teacher in the forthcoming school year. The school will lose a teacher if the Minister proceeds under the current system, although it would be justified in looking for another teacher.
This is what makes the system arbitrary. There is a lot of movement in urban areas at present and people are being transferred in and out of disadvantaged areas and areas with high levels of local authority housing. St. Catherine's is in a disadvantaged area, which is all the more reason for the Minister to show sensitivity. Another matter that is not taken into account when evaluating staffing levels is how school staff have used their resources to deal with problems. There are pupils with learning difficulties in most disadvantaged areas and programmes are put in place to benefit them. In this case, St. Catherine's staff have put together a resource remedial programme which deals with mathematics problems. The staff have tested the school's pupils and 70 per cent of pupils have received a standard score of 85 or less, which indicates a need for special remedial work. If the assistant teacher is lost, the remedial resource teacher will have to go back to teaching in the mainstream of the school and the school will lose the necessary work to improve numeracy among pupils. That would be the net effect of losing the teacher.
On one hand we talk about the Breaking the Cycle programme and putting resources into schools, while on the other we are taking out resources that are already in place. I do not see how the Minister can take away this teacher when pupil numbers now and in the next school year justify the teacher's retention. The deployment of existing staff ensures that pupils with learning problems are being dealt with and that will be totally undermined if the teacher is lost. We will have a net result that is worse than the loss of one teacher, as the structure of the school's programme will be undermined. I ask the Minister, whether on an ex-quota basis or in some other way, to ensure that the teacher is retained and that the school will continue to benefit from its existing programmes.
