School Staff Dail Éireann — 2021-05-13 ============================================================ Norma Foley (FF), Kerry To be clear, the primary staffing appeals board is an independent board and operates independently of the Department. There is an opportunity for appeal. I cannot comment on the specific school the Deputy mentioned as I am not familiar with it or the format of its appeal. However, we did successfully reduce the pupil-teacher ratio to 26:1 this year. We also included the three-point reduction for the retention of a teacher. To be fair, that is a significant advancement for schools being able to hold onto a teacher and equally for the classroom base to be a ratio of 26:1. That is the level that schools are allocated in their entirety. If some classes are less than that and some are greater, that is a matter for the schools themselves distribute their teaching staff. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-05-13/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:16+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-05-13