A Co Kildare primary school has said the Department of Education’s refusal to allocate an additional teacher “punishes us for helping” after it was tasked with enrolling an additional junior infant class.St Corban’s National School in Naas said it had enrolled an additional junior infant class due to a “crisis” in which 25 children in the area were without places for the coming school year.Although the department had “formally requested” it enrol the additional class, the school told parents late last month it was “refusing to allocate a teacher” for it. The school had two junior infants classes in previous years.“We believe that this is very unfair and disadvantages the children currently enrolled,” it said, adding: “It punishes us for helping the department. They created this extra class and these exceptional circumstances and now they will not supply the extra teacher.”The school told parents it had two options due to the refusal, including cancelling the class – leaving 25 children without a place – or redeploying one of its two first-class teachers.However, this would see both first classes amalgamated into one “huge class of 34 children”, the school wrote, adding that it would put the pupils at a disadvantage and the class would be “way above” the department’s average pupil-to-teacher ratio of 23:1.Jayne Malone, whose five-year-old son Jamie is due to begin junior infants at St Corban’s, said parents were “extremely concerned”, with some worrying over whether they would “have spots in September or not”.Her other son, Danny (6) would be in the affected first class should both be amalgamated, with Malone saying there would be “no decent level of education in that class” due to its size.“The school’s done everything they can, exhausted all options, and now it’s on us,” she said, adding that parents have been contacting the department, Minister for Education Hildegarde Naughton and local representatives.“I think it’s absolutely insane that we are one of the richest countries in Europe and we can’t afford a teacher’s salary. They can afford a €336,000 bike shed but they won’t give a school in Naas a teacher,” she said.Hazel Lavery, another parent whose son will be in the affected first class should it be amalgamated, said the school had been left in an “impossible situation”.“They’ve got two options that just aren’t options in my mind. You can’t leave 25 children without a school place, and you can’t put 34 six- and seven-year-old boys into a class,” she said.A spokesperson for the department said no commitment had been given to provide an additional teacher for the new class, saying St Corban’s did “not meet the criteria” for one.Additional teachers are allocated when pupil numbers increase above a certain threshold. Below these thresholds, schools organise their classes to operate within the existing allocation, it said.St Corban’s were approached for comment.