The Irish National Teachers' Organisation has announced that one-day teachers' strikes will take place in four schools next month to highlight funding and staffing problems in primary schools.
The strikes will take place at St Mary's Place Boys' National School and the Central Model Senior NS in central Dublin on October 6th; at Dooagh NS in Achill, Co Mayo, on October 7th and at Castletara NS, Ballyhaise, Co Cavan, on October 8th.
However, the Department of Education and Science has queried whether it is appropriate for the two Dublin schools to go on strike given their relatively good pupilteacher ratios.
The INTO has also organised 23 public meetings throughout the State to highlight, in particular, the imbalance between the running cost grants paid to primary and post-primary schools.
INTO general secretary Senator Joe O'Toole told a meeting in Navan, Co Meath, this week that a 12-year-old in the final year of primary school attracted an annual grant of £50. Six months later the same pupil at a second-level school would attract a grant of more than £150.
He said there was also no justification for having a worse pupil-teacher ratios in primary than post-primary schools. "It is structured negligence for the Government to insist on schedules which create classes of over 30 pupils per teacher."
However, a Department of Education and Science spokesman expressed surprise that schools like St Mary's Place and the Central Model school, with their good pupil-teacher ratios, were going on strike.
He said the three youngest classes at St Mary's Place had an average pupil-teacher ratios of 15:1, in line with its status as a disadvantaged "Breaking the Cycle" school. If the Central Model school had followed other schools' example and divided its second year, it too would have had such a ratio. He also listed the remedial and home school liaison resources of the two schools. An INTO spokeswoman countered by pointing to the "huge number" of asylum-seekers' children taken in by St Mary's Place with no extra staff or resources.