Minister for Education Mary Hanafin came under fire tonight as a row over class sizes took centre stage at two teachers’ annual conferences.
More than 750 primary teachers in Kilkenny threatened industrial action unless class numbers were reduced.
Meanwhile, some 500 second-level teachers in Killarney agreed that their union should establish a policy for a maximum class size of 20 for all subjects.
Both groups claim the minister has failed to reduce class sizes as pledged in the Programme for Government before the last general election.
Patricia Wroe, president of the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (Asti), said teachers experienced inadequate levels of support every day with students not getting the educational experience they deserved.
She said: "Today in our secondary schools we are faced with large classes - 16 per cent of junior cycle students are in classes of 30 and more students for core subjects, including maths.
"Many of the popular subjects at Leaving Cert also have large classes of 25, 28 or 29." Ms Wroe told delegates and the minister that the organisation was also concerned that nothing had been done to deal with the issue of unqualified personnel working in the place of teachers.
"A qualified, registered teacher in every class is our objective," she added. "The Teaching Council Act upholds this. Yet the proposed solution to the current shortage of professional teachers is to create amending legislation to allow you, minister, to pay non-qualified persons to work in classrooms before this year's end."
Earlier, teachers from all over Ireland at the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) Annual Congress in Kilkenny unanimously passed a motion calling on the Government to implement the agreed reductions in class size as outlined in the Programme for Government immediately.
A clause was also agreed to take whatever action was necessary, up to and including industrial action, to ensure that these commitments were honoured.
Declan Kelleher, principal at Corofin National School in Co Clare, said the strength of feeling among delegates was extraordinary.
He said that while pre-school regulations enforced one adult to work with every eight children, four-year-old's in local primary schools were in classes of 30. "It's an absolute disgrace," he said.
"It's very seldom the INTO would go down the route of industrial action. The last thing we want to do is want our children and teachers to be out of school. "We will now go in to negotiations and go back on campaigning with parents and partners in primary school management to try and ensure the commitments in the Programme for Government are lived up to.
"However, if they are not making progress, if there's not going to be an alteration in the situation by the budget at the end of the autumn, then we are certainly going to have to look at activating the industrial action clause."
Minister Hanafin had told the INTO delegates the Programme for Government contained a commitment to provide 4,000 additional primary teachers between 2007 and 2012.
"With the extra teachers already put in place this year and those provided for in the Budget, we are ahead of target with about 2,000 extra primary teachers to be delivered within just two years," she said.
"In the primary sector alone, there are now in the region of 6,000 more teachers on the payroll than there were in 2002. Extra teachers have been provided in the 2006/07 and 2007/08 school years specifically to reduce class sizes."