Petition to Fossa National School Board of Management for change in relation to school enrolment policy and class structure.

12 June 2023

To

The Board of Management, Fossa National School, Killarney

Background

-          While primary school classes in Ireland have fallen to their lowest ever average size of 22.8 pupils in the academic year 2021/22 (down from 23.3 in 2020/21), they remain almost three pupils per class higher than the EU average class size of 20 (Education at a Glance – OECD 2021).

-          Fossa National School is a school with large class sizes. There were 275 children split between 8 groupings and 11 mainstream teachers in the school year 2022/23. We have average class sizes of 34.3. This has been the case for several years now. In the school year 2022/23 we had 37 children join the junior infants class, the largest intake for a junior infants class on record. We now have several classes in the school with 35 children or more enrolled. According to the primary database online for 2021/22, only 64 classes in Ireland out of 23,572 accounted for have 35 children or more enrolled. 

-          The school had a Whole School Evaluation performed in 2019 with a recommendation made that “school management should ensure that all mainstream teachers are used for their intended purpose in accordance with Department of Education circulars on staffing and in doing so, ensure that the number of pupils in any class is kept as low as possible”. Following the Whole School Evaluation there was a move to create smaller class sizes for junior classes in the school and this has been the precedence ever since. 

-          However, since 2019 this standard has not consistently been met. Concerningly, we are now experiencing a third June in succession of late communication to parents on what the suggested class structure for the next school year will be. This is a repeated situation where the lessons of previous years have not been learned. Once again  the challenge of organising large class sizes is being proposed without consultation with parents in a way that many parents have serious concerns about. 

-          Last June there was concern that the large class sizes would be managed by trying to split classes across the school. Given the concerns of parents about this plan, it did not go ahead. This June there is concern that the outgoing junior infants class, the biggest class in the school, will be combined for senior infants next year.  The approach of a combined senior infant class was in place for school year 2021/22 and has been considered by many parents of those children in that class to have had a negative impact on their academic progress. 

Our requests for change to the Board of Management

1)       Follow the recommendation of the Whole School Evaluation to focus on creating smaller class sizes. This would also be In accordance with the stated goal on the school website to have “a maximum number of children permitted to enrol in each class group set at 33 children”.  We would like the Board of Management to commit to a goal of reducing class sizes and put in place a plan to achieve this. The foundation of this will need to be adherence to a robust enrolment policy where the number of children admitted per year to the school is set at a maximum of 30 but ideally may be lower. We would also like a commitment that where a class size is already above 30 that additional children will not be accepted into the class group. If there is natural attrition in classes moving forward, we request that the school does not see this as an opportunity to bring more children into already large classes, and instead accepts this a step towards achieving smaller classes for our children. 

2)       With 11 mainstream teachers covering 8 class year groups there is the opportunity for 3 class year groups to be split in Fossa School. Research would indicate that these split classes should be the most junior classes of the school (see Appendix for details) The upset caused last June at the prospect of more senior classes of the school being split to manage the large class size issue demonstrates that this preference for split classes to be the junior classes has always been there. We request a consistent approach to junior infants, senior infants and first class being that they are split classes in the school every year henceforth. 

3)       We request the communication of the upcoming school year class structures to be circulated  in March of the current year from now on as is common practice in many other schools. Learning of the class structures in June of a school year leaves little time to capture input from parents on the plan. 

Appendix

*A study published by the Educational Research Centre, St Patrick’s College Campus, Drumcondra, Dublin in 2017 looked at The impact of DEIS on the size of junior classes in urban primary schools in 2014/15 with comparative data from 2009/10. While Fossa National School is not a DEIS school, the study highlights that the evidence indicates that smaller classes (fewer than 20 students) in the early grades (the first four years) can have a positive and long-lasting impact on student achievement, (Glass & Smith, 1979; Schanzenbach, 2014; Zyngier, 2014).