The process of assessing the need for new or additional educational facilities at primary or post-primary level in any given area entails consideration of all relevant factors, including enrolment and demographic trends, housing developments and the capacity of existing schools to meet the demand for places. Liaison with existing schools is also an important part of the process, as the school authorities would usually alert my Department where, in their view, the need for additional accommodation is anticipated. In this way, every effort is made to ensure that there is adequate existing provision, or that timely arrangements are made to extend capacity or provide new infrastructure where necessary.
Over and above the statutory consultation provisions in relation to draft area development plans, the Department has in recent years worked to strengthen contacts with local authorities to enable informed decisions to be made in planning future educational provision. It's obvious that plans for new schools must be backed up by a significant structural programme and that the most urgent schools feature in a capital programme. To achieve this, each application for capital funding is measured against published prioritisation criteria. Under the criteria, projects in rapidly developing areas, such as Co. Kildare, are assigned a band 1 priority rating which is the highest priority possible. This is clear evidence of my Department's commitment to ensuring that the needs of rapidly developing areas are met as quickly as possible.
To underpin the prioritisation criteria, standard/generic designs have been developed by Building Section for 8 and 16-classroom schools to fast track delivery. Use of these designs essentially means that the time spent on the traditional early stages of architectural planning has been removed and now, once a site has been acquired and is suitable, the plan can be submitted for planning permission after site orientation has been carried out. Where a Generic Repeat Design is not suitable due to site restrictions, School Building Section can use the Design and Build approach to effect a fast delivery.
My Department is also working proactively with some local authorities to explore the possibility of the development of school provision in tandem with the development of community facilities. This enhanced cooperation has the effect of minimising the Department's land requirements and thus reducing site costs while at the same time providing local communities with new schools with enhanced facilities.
Under the provisions of the Strategic Development Zones (SDZ) it is generally the position that sites must be reserved for schools and that the schools must be developed commensurate with housing and other developments such as community facilities. This approach ensures that schools are delivered commensurate with housing developments and it one that should be considered for replication by local authorities up and down the country.
The Department has recently adopted an area based approach to school planning where, through a public consultation process involving all interested parties, a blueprint for schools' development in an area for a 10 year timeframe is set out. The draft should be ready to go for public consultation in a matter of weeks. The purpose of this new approach to school planning is to ensure that, in future, the provision of school infrastructure will be decided only after a transparent consultation process. In this regard, parents, trustees, sponsors of prospective new schools and all interested parties in the locality will have the opportunity to have their voices heard in the process.
As the Deputy will be aware, major improvements have been made in staffing at both primary and post-primary level in recent years. At the beginning of the current school year there are no less than 4000 extra teachers in our primary schools, compared with 2002. The average class size in our primary schools 24 and there is now one teacher for 17 pupils at primary level. Children with special needs and those from disadvantaged areas are getting more support than ever before to help them to make the most of their time at school.
Indeed, with the thousands of extra primary teachers hired by this Government, recent years have seen the largest expansion in teacher numbers since the expansion of free education. Over the next two school years even more teachers will be put in place both for the above priority areas of disadvantage and special education and also under a reduction in the mainstream staffing schedule.
As the Deputy knows all primary schools are staffed on a general rule of at least one classroom teacher for every 28 children. Of course, schools with only one or two teachers have much lower staffing ratios than that – with two teachers for just 12 pupils in some cases and so on — but the general rule is that there is at least one classroom teacher for every 28 children in the school. Next year (2007/2008 school year) this is being reduced to 27 children per classroom teacher.
A further initiative that has been of direct benefit to primary schools has been the change in the criteria for developing schools. For the current school year the threshold for getting a developing school post was reduced specifically to help schools that are seeing large increases in enrolments each year, as is the case in many schools. 170 such posts were sanctioned in the 2005/06 school year, compared to 105 in 2004/05.
At second level too major progress has been made. The pupil teacher ratio fell from 16:1 to 13:1 during the period from 1996/97 to 2005/2006. The reduction in the ratio was achieved through the creation of over 2000 additional posts and the retention of over 2100 posts which would otherwise have been lost due to the fall in enrolments. This Government has shown a clear determination to improve the staffing in our schools and we will continue to prioritise this issue going forward.