Results 241-260 of 15,342 for speaker:Helen McEntee

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: State Examinations (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: The Programme for Government commits to developing an appropriate mechanism to allow additional time for students with specific needs and in certain circumstances, and also to ensure that those who use assistive technology can do so in State examinations. The State Examinations Commission (SEC) has responsibility for the operation and delivery of the State examinations, and facilitates...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: State Examinations (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: The Programme for Government commits to developing an appropriate mechanism to allow additional time for students with specific needs and in certain circumstances, and also to ensure that those who use assistive technology can do so in State examinations. The State Examinations Commission (SEC) has responsibility for the operation and delivery of the State examinations, and facilitates...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Teaching Council of Ireland (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: Under Section 38 of the Teaching Council Act, all initial teacher education programmes must be accredited by the Teaching Council for registration purposes. The Council reviewed its policy on standards for programmes of initial teacher education and published updated standards in Céim: Standards for Initial Teacher Education in October 2020. 54 ITE programmes across 14 HEI (higher...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Teaching Qualifications (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: The Department of Education provides annual funding for two distinct categories of post-graduate programmes for Special Education Teachers: Post-Graduate Diploma Programme of Teacher Professional Learning for Special Education Teachers.Graduate Certificate in Autism Education for teachers working with Autistic Pupils in Special Schools, Special Classes or as Special Education Teachers in...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Scoileanna DEIS (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: Tackling educational disadvantage and supporting students to fulfil their full potential in life is a key priority for me as Minister for Education, and for the Government. The DEIS programme is a key policy of Government to tackle concentrated educational disadvantage at school level. It provides a targeted range of supports and is additional to the universal supports provided to all...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Departmental Data (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: The information requested by the Deputy is set out in the attached tabular statement. Year Number of Senior Quantity Chartered Surveyors (Whole time equivalent) (WTE) Current 2025 6 31/12/2024 5 31/12/2023 5

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Textbooks (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: The Programme for Government 2025 commits to provide free schoolbooks to all children in the free education system. On April 10th last, I announced details of year three of the Primary Schoolbooks Scheme which provides free schoolbooks, workbooks and copybooks, to pupils in primary and special schools. More than 550,000 pupils enrolled in approximately 3,221 primary schools, including...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Transport (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: The School Transport Scheme is a significant operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department of Education. In the current school year, over 172,500 children, are transported daily in approximately 7,900 vehicles across 10,300 routes daily to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country. These daily trips cover over 100 million kilometres. This figure includes...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Building Projects (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: As the Deputy maybe aware, the purpose of the Emergency Works Scheme (EWS) is to provide funding specifically for unforeseen emergencies. It does so by ensuring the availability of funding for urgent works to those schools that are in need of resources as a result of an emergency situation. An emergency is deemed to be a situation which poses an immediate risk to health, life, property, or...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Staff (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: The key factor for determining the level of staffing resources provided at individual school level is the staffing schedule for the relevant school year and pupil enrolments on the previous 30 September. The staffing process contains an appeals mechanism for schools to submit a staffing appeal under certain criteria to an independent Primary Staffing Appeals Board. The school...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Transport (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: The School Transport Scheme is a significant operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department of Education. In the current school year, over 172,500 children, are transported daily in approximately 7,900 vehicles across 10,300 routes daily to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country. These daily trips cover over 100 million kilometres. This figure includes...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Information and Communications Technology (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: Almost all of my department’s computer systems can utilise the síneadh fada. The exceptions to this are listed in the table below. The current inability of these systems to utilise the síneadh fada is caused by an external restrictions which my department is keeping under review. Computer System Restriction Comment: Microsoft...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: EU Directives (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: I am pleased to share that Department of Education has no EU directives which are awaiting transposition.

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Departmental Properties (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: I wish to advise the Deputy that temporary accommodation in schools may be rented or purchased and funded by the Department or by the school authority itself, with or without Department sanction. As the Deputy will appreciate, my Department's priority is to ensure that every child has access to a physical school place. In this regard, it is sometimes necessary to make use of temporary...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Departmental Contracts (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: I can confirm to the Deputy that the Department of Education have contracted companies in place for the provision of cleaning services. The value of these contracts (Ex Vat), is apportioned to multiple locations and includes services provided to the Department of Education under a shared services agreement in some cases. The companies, values and duration of such contracts in place are set...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Departmental Contracts (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: The information sought is in the table below: Location Contractor Commencement of Contract Duration of Contract Value (ex vat) for Initial length of contract Dublin Manguard Plus Limited 27th November 2023 2 year contract with 2 one year extensions €624,175 Tullamore Secureall...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Staff (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: Transition Year is a valuable programme for students and under the redevelopment of Senior Cycle programme, it is my ambition that in the future every student who wishes to avail of Transition Year will have the opportunity to do so. This year, over 60,000 students are enrolled in TY programmes representing a record level of participation. Since 2018, the number of students choosing...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Curriculum (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: Teacher allocations to all schools are approved annually by my Department in accordance with established rules based on recognised pupil enrolment. The criteria for the allocation of posts are communicated to school managements annually and are available on the Department website. A proportion of posts allocated to post-primary schools are determined on the basis of ratios of recognised...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Building Projects (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: The school to which the Deputy refers was approved to enter the Department’s pipeline for a project under my Department's Additional School Accommodation (ASA) Scheme to provide one mainstream classroom and a two classroom Special Education Needs (SEN) base. The project was devolved to the school authority who is assisted by Cavan and Monaghan Education and Training Board (CMETB) in...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Building Projects (29 Apr 2025)

Helen McEntee: The school to which the Deputy refers was approved to enter the Department’s pipeline for a project under the Additional School Accommodation (ASA) Scheme. To provide 4 classroom Special Education Needs (SEN) base, 2 Special Education Tuition rooms, 1 music room, 1 science laboratory and preparation area, 2 technology rooms and 1 preparation area, a general purpose hall and a...