Averil Power (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the groups that are before us today. I asked for this issue to be tabled a few months ago because it is one of the most important issues in education.

In any profession or employment, the quality of leadership at the top and the management and leadership structure that is available throughout the system is essential in ensuring that employees feel supported and that there is a proper culture throughout the system. Traditionally, notwithstanding that the IPPN and the NAPD and others have been pushing this issue for quite a long time, this is an area in which the Irish education system has been weak. The programmes that these bodies have developed for the training of teachers are fantastic, for instance, the mentoring programme from the IPPN, but it is an area where the Department needs to do much more.

There are good examples given in the submissions, and, indeed, the one sent in from the Joint Managerial Body, JMB, about more developed structures elsewhere and how in other systems there are principals, who are, to use the term of the IPPN, leaders of learning and for whom that is their job. Their job is not all the administrative work and red tape. They are freed up and have the support systems to be leaders of learning. I visited Canada a good few years ago to look at the way they do it there, and it is totally different, where principals are really leaders in an educational sense and they have the freedom to do that. They also play a strong role in performance management. They have a role in hiring staff and in making sure they meet their continuing personal development, CPD.