Failure to reduce class sizes in Budget 2025 ‘disappointing’

For the second year in a row, there has been no commitment in the budget to reduce primary school class sizes and this has been described as a missed opportunity by INTO vice-president Anne Horan.

“The important thing that we were looking for was a reduction in class sizes and, for the second year in a row, the minister for education hasn’t provided it and she saw the value in it previously, but it hasn’t come through in Budget 25 or Budget 24 and that’s really disappointing,” said Ms Horan.

“We want our children to be on a level playing field with children all over Europe and that’s not going to happen from here,” Ms Horan said.

The primary teachers’ union general secretary, John Boyle, highlighted another issue that had been raised in its pre-budget submission: The capitation grant available to schools to pay heating, lighting, and other bills.

“Providing a higher allocation for mobile-phone pouches than the increase in primary capitation is tone deaf to the pressing needs of primary and special schools,” Mr Boyle said. “At a time when Ireland has the largest budget surplus in the history of the State, it beggars belief that initiatives like this have been prioritised over the real needs of our cash-strapped schools.”

The Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland focused its response to the budget on the under-investment in schools and the extent of the “teacher recruitment-and-retention crisis”.

“We note the announcement of 768 additional special-education-needs teachers and we expect that these will be thinly spread across the primary and second-level education sectors,” said ASTI president, Donal Cremin.

“While there is a commitment to increasing the capitation grant, there is no detail regarding this.

“Any increase in the capitation grant for second-level schools will be in the context of Ireland coming in last place out of 34 OECD countries for investment in second-level education, as a proportion of country GDP.”

In terms of the third-level sector, UCC students’ union president, Katie Halpin Hill, welcomed measures to reduce the student fees by an additional €1,000, but said that the emphasis on once-off measures and not on sustainable measures around university and third-level funding was something on which they required further clarity.