Richard Bruton
Ceist:455 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Education and Science the estimated number of extra teachers required to reduce average class size in the junior classes of primary schools by five pupils. [19555/01]
Written Answers. - Pupil-Teacher Ratio.
I regret that it is not possible at present to supply the information as requested by the Deputy as it would be necessary to allocate an inordinate level of staffing resources to abstract the data required. However, my Department is currently examining in the context of the IT development programme, the possibility of developing a system to facilitate the production of data such as that requested by the Deputy at short notice.
Richard Bruton
Ceist:456 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Education and Science the estimated number of pupils in primary school who are in junior classes and in senior classes; and the number of classroom teachers teaching these respective groups of pupils. [19556/01]
The information requested by the Deputy is set out in the following table and refers to the 1999/2000 school year.
|
Standard |
Number of Pupils |
Number of Teachers |
|
Junior Infants |
34,457 |
1,413 |
|
Senior Infants |
31,386 |
1,213 |
|
1st |
30,503 |
1,154 |
|
2nd |
31,505 |
1,191 |
|
3rd |
30,865 |
1,134 |
|
4th |
30,916 |
1,139 |
|
5th |
31,483 |
1,199 |
|
6th |
37,548 |
1,450 |
It should be noted that the above figures are for single grade classes only. The total number of sin gle grade classes in 1999-2000 was 9,893 out of an overall total of 17,252. Given the nature of many primary school classes, with consecutive and multi-grade classes making up 7,359 classes, it is not possible to break down all classes into junior and senior categories.