Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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240. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills further to Parliamentary Question Nos. 191, 220, 247 and 248, if he will clarify that schools are not obliged to make returns to his Department at the end of September each year detailing the teaching hours of every teacher, including specific details on whether a school employs a guidance counsellor with a qualification recognised by his Department; the number of hours each guidance counsellor spends providing guidance counselling; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5380/14]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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My Department will be notifying schools in due course of the data requirements that they must submit in respect of the 2014/15 school year. I should clarify for the Deputy that to the extent that the Department has sought teacher timetable data from second level schools in recent years, it has been for the sole purpose of providing information to assist the Department's Inspectorate conduct its schedule of inspections. Changes were made to the teacher allocation process in 2006/7 that eliminated any need for that data in determining individual school teacher allocations. More recently schools are provided with an overall allocation within which they have discretion to determine the resources that they allocate to individual subjects and to guidance.