Parent have been "hoodwinked in a cynical way" by Minister for Education Mary Hanafin over primary school class sizes, the Labour Party said today.
It was "inexplicable" that the second-richest state in Europe has "some of the most overcrowded class rooms anywhere," Labour education spokesman Ruairí Quinn said.
A circular to primary school principals this week instructed them to retain a pupil-to-teacher ratio of 27:1 for the school year 2008/09. As a result, an estimated 140 schools are likely to lose teachers, and a further 200 will be unable to make the appointments they were expecting.
The losses will occur if the number of pupils in a school is short of the ratio by even one.
Sinn Féin education spokesman Senator Pearse Doherty said some schools would now have up 37 pupils per class. "The education system is following the health system back to the dark days of the 1980s," he said.
The decision reneges on a commitment in the Programme for Government to reduce the pupil to teacher ratio in primary schools by one pupil every year until 2010. Schools were due to see the current level eventaully fall to 24:1.
The commitment was made in the run-up to the general election last year after an estimated 18,000 parents and teachers attended public meetings protesting at primary school class sizes.
The pre-election promise was welcomed by teachers but described by Opposition parties as a promise that could not be kept.
"The actual level of commitment of Mary Hanafin to primary school communities is now laid bare. . . . It is now clear that Minister Hanafin hoodwinked parents, and let schools down, in a most cynical way," Mr Quinn said today.
And he referred to contradiction of ministers promoting Ireland abroad as a knowledge economy while "disinvesting in our primary schools".
Teachers are under unacceptable pressure in overcrowded classrooms and numeracy and literacy levels are stagnating, he added.
John Carr, general secretary of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, said the announcement will be greeted with "anger and despair". Parents, pupils and teachers had been cynically betrayed, he added.
A spokeswoman for Ms Hanafin told this morning's Irish Timesthe decision had already been announced and was widely publicised in the Budget last December.
An OECD report of 30 countries last year found the State was last spending less on education generally than any other country in the study. Ireland was joint last with Mexico.
Primary schools are regarded as the most under-funded sector of the education system.