Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I said to Deputy Thomas Byrne, I did increase the release time to teaching principals. Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan mentioned the onslaught of curricular change but many others would say that we are reforming a curricular system that was not serving pupils as well as it should. Much work has gone into improving the reading programme at primary level and we are seeing the impact. Our ten year olds now have the best reading standards in Europe, and that is the result of implementation of curricular change and changing the way that material is taught in classrooms. That requires release for continuing professional development training of teachers to look at the new way of doing things.

We are seeing more use of data, and even in education there is a concentration on data to see how things are going and how things are being done better. These are not all unnecessary requirements and that is the point that must be made. Perhaps we can take out unnecessary requirements but the things that have been done, such as child protection and better curriculums, have been done after talking to experts on how we could best improve outcomes for children and then seeking to work with principals to implement it. That is other side of why we are doing some of these things, and we do recognise the pressure of continual change.

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