Teachers will revive last year’s campaign against overcrowded classes because they have been betrayed by the Government, the general secretary of the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) John Carr said today.
Addressing the union's annual conference in Kilkenny, Mr Carr said the decision to abandon a commitment in the Programme for Government to reduce class sizes was "inexcusable".
He noted that in response to the union's "crowded out" campaign attended by around 18,000 parents and teachers before the general election last year, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern promised to reduce the pupil-teacher ratio.
The Programme for Government contained a commitment to reduce the average class sizes from 27 to 24 by the start of the school year in 2010. But the Department of Education confirmed to schools two weeks' ago that this would not happen due to budgetary constraints and that around 140 schools would lose teachers while around 200 would not be allowed to recruit a new teacher as planned.
Mr Carr addressed most of his conference speech directly to Ms Hanafin who was in attendance, and said "the primary education agenda this year has gone into reverse".
"Last June, your government published a new Programme for Government setting out your education agenda. A year later the vast majority of those objectives have been cast aside and significant, time-bound promises have been cynically broken," he told delegates.
"So I want you and your colleagues in Cabinet to know that our campaign to end the scandal of overcrowded classes in primary school does not end .... we cannot and will not be silent."
He also criticised the provision of teacher-training places, which he said was minimal and would not provide sufficient numbers to reduce class sizes or address the problem of unqualified staff being used to cover for absences.
Too many teachers are trained in the UK, which was akin to having one of the largest colleges of education outside State control, he added.
He called of the Economic and Social Research Institute to carry out a study projecting supply and demand of primary teachers for the next eight years.
He said the increase in capitation funding this year was in effect a "savage cutback" because not all the money was available and over a fifth would be needed to meet new water charges.
The real increase amounted to 4.3 per cent at a time when inflation is running at twice that level in the sector, Mr Carr said.
There was a Constitutional question over State's requirement to provide free primary education because schools were paying for ancillary staff such as secretaries and caretakers through fund raising.
"The Constitution never intended 'free' to mean subsidised by raffles, cake sales, readathons or the proof-of- purchase vouchers of commercial companies," Mr Carr said.