Pledges to reduce class sizes in schools over the coming years should not be considered until “overspending” in other areas of education is brought under control, public spending officials have warned.
The programme for government commits to reducing the pupil-teacher ratio at primary level from one classroom teacher for every 23 pupils to one for every 19 pupils over its term in office.
The planned move follows calls from teachers’ unions to tackle “supersized” classes, with more than 50,000 pupils in classes with 30 children or more and more than 250,000 in classes with 25 or more.
The warning comes as Minister for Education Helen McEntee prepares to address teaching unions’ annual conferences.
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Briefing documents drawn up by Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER) officials for Minister Jack Chambers earlier this year show concern at overspending by the Department of Education.
“The Department of Education must address overspends on the vote [allocated expenditure] before considering any further reductions to the primary or post primary staffing schedules”, the officials told Mr Chambers.
They also argued that class sizes overall were already at the “lowest in the history of the State” at primary level, having fallen from a 26:1 teacher-student ratio to 23:1 between 2021 and 2023.
Documents show there has been tension over education spending within Government for some time. Top-level meetings have taken place over the last 12 months “to discuss the pattern of overspends by Department of Education”.
At one such meeting last year, DPER said a key message was that the education department “needed to keep within their allocated budget for 2024″ but “this has not been the case”.
Last October, for example, the Government approved a supplementary estimate of €960 million for the Department of Education. About half of this related to additional capital expenditure, while other areas of spending included pay, pensions and school transport.
There is also concern within DPER about increased spending on special education. It says the Department of Education “must be mindful of the trade-offs involved in prioritising one policy area over another” given the pressures apparent across allocated expenditure, “notably SEN [special educational needs] demographic pressure”.
Expenditure on special education has climbed by about €1.1 billion since 2017, an increase of almost 70 per cent, and will account for 28 per cent of the Department of Education’s expenditure budget this year. The increase has been primarily driven by the growing incidence of autism, records say.
Education authorities were previously working on an autism prevalence rate of 1.5 per cent of the school-going population, but it has risen to 3.5 per cent. Education officials believe it may now be closer to 5 per cent.
DPER said a number of previously agreed special education reforms have not been implemented. As a result, officials said, “the future policy direction has become unclear”.
This appears to be a reference to plans to create an “inclusive” education system, where all children with special needs would be educated in local mainstream schools instead of separate special classes or special schools.
“Moving towards a more inclusive system would, among other challenges, have very significant implications on public expenditure,” records state.
In response to queries, the Department of Education said progress on implementing the measure on class sizes “will be considered alongside all other programme for government commitments as part of the annual budgetary process”.
DPER also maintained that spending on school transport would be twice the cost of the scheme in 2019. It said it had concerns that a review of the scheme last year “did not review the operation and administration of the scheme by Bus Éireann and issues around fiscal sustainability”.
