Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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250. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of teaching posts vacant per county in national, primary and secondary schools, per county, in tabular form. [18940/23]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The recruitment and appointment of teachers to fill teaching posts is a matter for individual school authorities, subject to procedures agreed upon under Section 24 of the Education Act 1998 (as amended by the Education (Amendment) Act 2012). The Department does not currently collate data on vacant posts in schools per county.

The recruitment of teachers is a priority area of action for the Department given the importance of ensuring that every child's experience in school is positive and that they have available to them qualified, engaged, and supportive teachers to support them in their learning.

The Department is undertaking a comprehensive programme to support the supply of teachers, including:

• Additional primary substitute teacher supply panel posts have been provided in locations where significant challenges in sourcing substitution continue. This brings the total to 610 posts on 151 panels covering more than 2,840 schools, including the large majority of primary schools in Dublin.
• As a temporary measure post primary teachers can provide additional hours substitute cover in the subject they are qualified to teach. The number of additional hours that can be taught per term has been increased from 20 to 35 for the remainder of the 2022/23 school year.
• For 2022/23, higher education institutions have introduced flexibility in the delivery of initial teacher education programmes to allow student teachers to provide more substitute cover.
• The Teaching Council introduced regulations allowing for the registration of 3rd and 4th year undergraduate student teachers under registration Route 5 (Student Teachers).More than 2,700 student teachers have registered under Route 5 to date. This initiative supports the employment of student teachers to cover substitutable vacancies.
• A waiver of abatement for retired teachers returning to teach for up to 50 days in each of the three calendar years, 2021 to 2023 inclusive has been agreed with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. A communications campaign has also been launched to encourage retired teachers to take up short-term substitute positions.
• For the 2022/23 school year, job-sharing teachers may be employed to work as substitutes during the period they are rostered off duty and the limits on substitute work applying to teachers on career break have been suspended.

• At primary level, I recently approved 610 additional places on ITE programmes over the next two academic years (2023/24 and 2024/25).
• At post primary level, the Department has increased the number of places on teacher upskilling programmes in mathematics, Spanish and physics. The programmes are delivered outside of class time and are offered at no cost to the teacher. Approximately 170 places were provided in the first intake across the three programmes with an increase in places to over 300 in 2023.
• A new programme for post primary teachers to up-skill in Irish is planned for commencement in 2023/2024. The Department is also considering additional upskilling programmes in other priority subject areas.
• The Department introduced a scheme to allow post-primary schools to share teachers, the aim of which is to recruit teachers in high-demand subjects and give teachers a full-time teaching contract. It is expected that a pilot of the scheme will be introduced in a small number of locations for the 2023/24 school year.
• Newly qualified teachers (NQTs) who qualify outside Ireland may now complete induction (Droichead) in Ireland under a new measure implemented by the Teaching Council. This measure seeks to enhance the supply of NQTs available to schools.
• The Department provided details of the staffing arrangements for the 2023/24 school year to schools before the end of January. This will facilitate schools to begin recruitment for the 2023/24 school year earlier than in 2022.

Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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251. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the number of permanent teaching post contracts issued to teachers in national, primary and secondary schools in 2022, and to date in 2023. [18941/23]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to advise the Deputy, that the Boards of Management of schools are the direct employers of teachers. My Department acts as paymaster on behalf of primary schools, voluntary secondary, community and comprehensive schools.

Once an allocation of teaching posts has been made for schools then directly recruit and employ teachers.

Accordingly, my Department does not have details of the number of permanent teaching contracts which may be offered to teachers by schools each year, or then subsequently issued by schools. My Department does, however, publish details of the number of teaching posts which are allocated to schools each year and also the number of teachers employed by schools each year.

Details of the number of teaching posts which are allocated to primary and secondary schools each year are published as part of my Departments annual key statistics information reports. These reports are available at gov.ie - Key Statistics (www.gov.ie)

Details of the number of teachers who are appointed to primary and post primary schools (excluding ETB schools) each year are published at www.gov.ie/en/publication/c97fbd-teacher-statistics/#number-of-teachers-by-gender-appointed-to-teaching-posts

As the 2022/23 school year is still underway, data for the 2022/23 school year has not yet been compiled and published.