Primary school teachers are to discuss the issue of continuous overcrowding in classrooms at the INTO union conference in Co Clare today.
The meeting comes after the Government promised to reduce class sizes nearly a decade ago, although the issue still has not been addressed with one in four pupils are still in classrooms with 30 children or more. It is understood that union members will vote later on a renewed a proposal to shrink class sizes, with the biggest overcrowding being in the Dublin area.
Meanwhile a teacher at North Kildare Educate Together in Celbridge Pat Crowe had his say on the issue, Mr Crowe said before he began working there he taught in a class with more than 40 children. Mr Crowe added: “Apart from anything else, there’s the space issue – they get in each other’s way, they fall over each other’s bags all the time,” he said.
“You can get a lot of unnecessary aggro in the class. “But really the big thing about all this is talk it’s about children being able to have time to talk to each other and, critically, to talk to the teacher about what it is they’re learning, because they’re processing their learning as they talk about it.”