More than 40,000 or 8.2 per cent of primary school students were in classes of 30 or more pupils last year, according to the latest figures from the Department of Education.
The annual list of class sizes was published last month on the department’s website and the statistics for 2024 to 2025 show that 43,464 pupils are in classes with more than 30 pupils.
According to the figures, 109,246 Irish-based primary school students are in classes of, or below, 19. The remaining 419,817 students, or 79.35 per cent of all primary schoolchildren, are in larger classes.
The EU average is 19 pupils per class but the figure is 22.5 in Ireland.
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Both the last programme for government and the current one included commitments to reducing the primary school pupil-teacher ratio to the EU average, but Ireland remains at the “top of the league of shame”, according to general secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) John Boyle.
“Many EU countries with less financial resources than us have class sizes well below the EU average,” said Mr Boyle. He said the Government had failed to reduce class sizes in the last two budgets, adding: “They cannot in conscience make that mistake again in October.”
Just before the publication of the latest numbers, Minister for Education Helen McEntee told Fianna Fáil TD Malcolm Byrne in a parliamentary reply that in 2023-2024 there were 23,818 mainstream classes, of which 22,181 were of 29 or fewer pupils. There were 1,637 classes of 30 pupils or more, or 6.9 per cent of the total number of mainstream classes.
She said “in previous budgets, reducing the pupil-teacher ratios in primary schools was prioritised, which has brought the teacher-allocation ratio to an average of one classroom teacher for every 23 pupils in all primary schools, the lowest level ever seen at primary level”.
Ms McEntee said teacher allocations for Deis schools, which get additional supports, improved to an average of 17:1 for junior schools and 21:1 for senior.
Mr Byrne said the pupil-teacher ratio had been improving “but my concern has been that there are a certain number of classes still with 30-plus pupils and a lot of those are in areas of rapid growth”, including in his Wicklow-Wexford constituency.
The Gorey electoral area population grew by 14 per cent between 2016 and 2022. “Obviously a lot of that are younger families” who need school places, said Mr Byrne. He said Gorey Central School is “the largest Church of Ireland school in the country and it has a number of 30-plus classes” and has been waiting a considerable time for a school extension.
The INTO general secretary said Ireland is “completely out of kilter with the rest of Europe”. Estonia has fewer resources than Ireland but is investing more per child and is “forging ahead in all the international comparisons because they have very low class sizes for quite a considerable length of years”. Estonia and Finland have the highest-performing school systems, Mr Boyle said.
A department spokesperson said: “the number of mainstream classroom teachers has risen by 32.3 per cent (from 18,011 to 23,818) over the last 20 years”.
The total number of teaching posts, the department says, has increased from 26,039 to 42,680 over the same period.
“This measure (along with pupil-teacher ratio) includes both classroom teachers and other teachers that support the overall education of pupils, that is, special education teachers, English as an additional language support teachers, and home school community liaison teachers, as well as any other full-time teaching staff.
“However, it is important to note that class size does not include such supports.”
