Class sizes.

Quality

Just wondering how many children are in your childs class.


My daughter is in 4th class at the moment and there are 24 in her class.

I believe the average is 27 pupils per class. But with the 2009 budget this is set to rise.

themadchef

My oldest (4yrs) 3 kids in his class.....

There are 6 kids in the entire room. 20 pupils in the whole school. 2 teachers.

Trotter

I know a lot of teachers, an awful lot, who have 29+ children in their classes. With the measures in this budget, I believe that a whole lot of children will now be in classrooms of 31+. I think it has never been more important for parents and teachers to work together to make sure these measures aren't implemented. The cuts in this budget gave two fingers to the education of children in this country.

di11on

It's so depressing... 10 years of unprecedented prosperity and growth and there has been NO improvement in the really critical areas that matter... health and the education of our children.

Why can't we put our kids first? Surely it makes economic sense in the long run.

Nevyn

My son is in a class of 18, this is due to the school being considered as being in a disadvantaged area and children moving away over the last 5 years.
My daughter is in a class of 22.

delly

I left primary school in 1990 I believe, and back then we had a total of 39 in our class. Bad as the recent increase will be, I doubt it'll go back to the bad old days of the 80's.

Catari Jaguar

Didn't they decide to do a u-turn on that budget decision?

DEIS schools have very small classes. I teach in a school with less than 100 kids in it. I have 15 in my class, 11 last year.

It's sad to think some teachers have double my class size. I would go crazy. :eek:

Trotter

I've got more than the 28 in my class already. I had less than 20 last year and there is a profound difference. I feel guilty that I'm not getting enough time with each child this year to really help as much as I could last year.

I've sent a whole lot of emails to TDs in the past week. I've had zero back from FF TDs, 2 from Labour, and one ridiculous one from a Green Party TD who insulted my intelligence by blatantly sounding like Fianna Fáils poodle. I won't be told that theres no money in the coffers and that class sizes had to go up, while the developers and investors that are FF's friends gloat at how they havent been touched. I mentioned that in my reply to that Green Party TD, just not so diplomatically.

RAFC

I have two children in primary - as with Thaedydal, the school is classed as being in a disadvantaged area.

There are 2 second classes of 17 and 18 pupils per class and 3 fifth classes with 16,17 and 18 in each.

The class sizes all the way up are like this until the kids reach 6th class, then 3 become 2.

Quality

So how come some schools have higher pupil - teacher ratios than are acceptable . When my daughter started school in 2003, I am nearly certain that 31 kids were in her class.

Trotter

Quality wrote: »

So how come some schools have higher pupil - teacher ratios than are acceptable . When my daughter started school in 2003, I am nearly certain that 31 kids were in her class.

Some schools are considered to be in disadvantaged areas, so they are often allocated more teachers.

I would think that at the moment, most primary school age children in Ireland are in classes of 28+ already.


I really appeal to all parents reading this; back the teachers on this one. We are fired up to get this reversed. Our only motivation in this fight is to help your children to have a better learning environment. With your very vocal support, we can work together to get this changed. Look at what the pensioners achieved this week!

Trotter

Can I also bring this to your attention; Its a party political broadcast from the Green Party prior to the election.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvtUeSjzYL0


It shows small children saying "Please Vote Green".

"Id like there to be less kids in my class, so the teacher can pay me
more attention".



I think that says it all really. Watch them vote the other way next week.

di11on

It really is laughable....

No money in the coffers so lets rob some from the kids and the elderly while the civil service juggernaut ploughs on immune from any economic reality. I'm no Fianna fail supporter.... but bring back McCreevy!!

Back on topic, there's 24 kids in my DDs class

dubsgirl

32 in my 10 yr olds class

my 4year old has 22 but this will change when he gets to 1st class then 3 classes merge into 2 making a class size of 33!!

We are not in a disadvantaged area but that size classes seems disadvantaged to me!

Redpunto

theres 29 in my kids 2nd class

Gyalist

My son is in his first year of secondary school - 18 in his class. At his primary school there was never more than 20 kids in his class.

astrofool

Back in secondary (when I was there), we streamed after first year (~1996), the A class had 35, B had 30, C had 25.

It didn't matter that the A class had 35, almost everyone in it got the course they wanted by the end of secondary, and the C class got more attention per pupil from teachers.

They had to abolish streaming the year after (not the school's choice).

Large class sizes can be fine, if the school's are allowed to manage it properly (and be un PC about it if needs be).

byhookorbycrook

Large classes don't work at primary. The revised curriculum is all about oral work /group work and children working at thier own level.

The 29/1 is only a notional figure put out by the govt. They count every single teacher in the country, like resource teachers, nonteaching principals etc and divide this into the no of children, so hence arrive at a much lower no.

Talks of children being sent home due to lack of subs cover and no space to divide up the packed classes into other packed classes

byhookorbycrook

oh and it's not just class size

• Class Size: Irish classes are already the second highest in Europe. Next year, your child’s class could be even more crowded.
• English Language Teachers: Hundreds of English language teachers will go in schools. The only help most newcomer children will now get is in an already over-crowded class. This will affect all pupils.
• School Books: Funding for free books for poor children is withdrawn in 90% of schools.
• Substitute Teachers: From 1 January 2009 there will be no substitute cover for teachers on uncertified sick leave. Schools may have to send children home as the government won’t pay teachers.
• Equipment Grants: All equipment and resource grants for resource teachers working with special needs children abolished.
• Traveller Children: Funding of €4.3m for Traveller children slashed.
• Library Books: €2.1m is gone from school library grants.

Blisterman

Do small school classes make that much of a difference?

I know the institute has 100s of students in each class, and that gets the best results in the country.

I think the quality of teachers is much more important than how many there are.

PurpleFistMixer

As far as the Institute goes, I've heard things said about overcrowded classes, and never really getting to know your classmates because the classes are so large. They get lots of good results, yes, but one can easily argue that there's more to education than that.

When I was in primary school I think my class was about 30, until 5th class when for some reason we were split into 3 classes, and I was lucky enough to be put into the "small class" of 15 (the other 2 classes had 25ish I'm guessing), which was fantastic for all of us - we all knew each other so much better, and the teacher, and she even bought us icecreams sometimes and let us have class outside when it was sunny, because there were so few of us... Thems were the days. To this day I'm not entirely sure why there was 1 class smaller than the rest, suspect it might have been due to the room being too small to take anyone else...

In secondary school there were about 20-25 in my class, but of course different subjects had wildly different numbers (posssibly almost 30 in my English class, against 3 in my Maths class).

Dont be at yourself

I used to teach out in Japan, and class-sizes in my school varied from 38 to 41 students. This was second-level, comparable to Leaving Cert back here.

I don't think, at that age, the additional students had a significantly negative impact on the pupils' education. Indeed, the additional input from students often meant lessons went smoother than they may have in smaller classes.

For me, the biggest drawback of large classes is that it impacts on a student's willingness to volunteer answers and contribute in general. It takes a lot of confidence to speak in front of a group of your peers. However, I don't think that it would be necessarily any easier to do so in a class of 25 than 35.

Lizzykins

28 in my daughter's Junior Infant class. God help the kids who need more attention than the others because they won't get it. I'll be emailing our local Fianna Fail TD to register my protest. Let him give up his pension and ministerial car(he might have one). That would pay for a teacher or two. Funny how they never think of those cuts isn't it?

bored and tired

24 in my ds class, 8teacher school,
dont know what they will do if they lose a teacher. they have a walking principle and support teacher so i presume one of them would have to take on the class, so we would have a working principal with 8 teachers and a school to maintain to a high standard or lose the support teacher so there would be no help for the kids with problems in maths and english.

not to mention that i wont even have arrived at work when i could get a text saying sorry teachers sick, please pick your children back up., its going to drive a lot of working parents out of there jobs.

any one going to go up to the rally in dublin?? I think its on wednesday.

byhookorbycrook

The Learning support teacher will not be used in the class, the l/support allocation is determined by another way, so you could well lose a teacher and have lots of split classes.

You can check the nos here

http://www.ippn.ie/assets/74/7BD743DC-4E5A-484A-A6DC8AF2AD09EA20_document/Staffing%20Schedule%2006-07.pdf

luckat

Get ready to pound the streets when the elections come - not in demonstrations, but going door-to-door in the constituencies of the current Ministers, to talk to their constituents about the effect on schools of their decisions in the Budget.

Sure, there have been years of prosperity. More people have had jobs, more people have been able to buy increaingly overpriced houses. A very few people have got rich.

But the budget decisions showed where the values of the government lie. They didn't take away tax shelters and tax breaks of the rich. They targeted the powerlesss.

Education is vital for Ireland to compete in the tough years that are coming. Is your kid getting good teaching in arithmetic, for instance? Here's what the competition are learning:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIiDomlEjJw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qSA4ywFmZA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss0qcaCjx80
and even Americans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguMYWW8EAU&feature=related

July

This situation is disgraceful!

The Primary School I went to as a child is now a 2 teacher school. They were due to get a third teacher next September but don't qualify now due to the new teacher/pupil ratio. They are short by one child!

In one room the principal teaches 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th classes. In the other room the teacher has Junior Infants, Senior Infants, 1st and 2nd classes.

I have subbed in each room. It's impossible to 'teach'. Well that was me as an unqualified sub, I'm not saying these teachers don't teach. The most I could do was delegate work to each class and fly around the room like a headless chicken trying to keep early finishers busy and give support to the children who needed it. It is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE in large classes.

Utmost respect to these teachers, who are often seen as having a 'cushy number'. That is just not true!

There's a very interesting thread here that shows a snapshot, in teachers' words, of the impact of these shocking cuts.

That site also shows the dedication, hard work and planning that goes into teaching. There are posts at all hours of the evening/night that show that teachers are not on a 9-3 day!

nesf

Guys, there's a political forum for motivating the vote, keep discussion in this forum on the practical parenting side of the question.

Apologies for the late warning, I'm away from home at the moment and don't have as much of a chance to check on this forum.

nesf

My kid is still in pre-school so not really relevant. I was in classes of 30+ in secondary and never really took much notice, I was in a class of less than 20 in primary school but that was because it was a tiny country school and that 20 was 2 year's worth of students being taught simultaneously by a single teacher because we barely had the numbers to justify having 4 teachers in the school (it's lost one since then).

Nevyn

I don't have a problem with parents asking other parents who to complain to those who are meant to represent them.

nesf

Thaedydal wrote: »

I don't have a problem with parents asking other parents who to complain to those who are meant to represent them.

Fair enough.