Results 801-820 of 15,047 for speaker:Helen McEntee

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Funding (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: My Department’s voted estimate for capital and current expenditure for 2025 stands at €11.9 Billion. This represents an increase of over €3.2 Billion or 37% since 2020 and builds on significant increases in recent budgets. This is the third largest budget across Government, and the largest ever investment in our schools. This indicates the strong commitment to...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Staff (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: The Department of Education has been providing a payroll service for former grant funded school secretaries with effect from 1st September 2023. The provision of this payroll service is part of a package agreed with Fórsa, the trade union representing school secretaries, following a series of engagements at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) in 2022. The secretaries had previously...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Building Projects (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: The large scale capital project for the school referred to by the Deputy is the provision of a new 600 pupil school building including all associated ancillary accommodation. The project was originally authorised to proceed to tender, upon completion of the prequalification shortlisting process in September 2022. Planning Permission was due to expire in December 2022 and it was...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: State Examinations (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: I am committed to ensuring that all of our children and young people have the opportunity to reach their full potential. The State Examinations Commission facilitates access to the certificate examinations through its scheme of reasonable accommodations at the certificate examinations. The purpose of the RACE scheme is to allow candidates who have special educational needs to demonstrate...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Accommodation (27 Feb 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. The project will provide 9 Mainstream classrooms (6 Prefab replacement) and a 2 Classroom SEN base. The Stage 2b Report was received in Q4 of 2024 and remains under review from both a technical and cost perspective in accordance...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Teacher Training (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: Oide is the new support service for teachers and school leaders, funded by the Department of Education. Oide’s post-primary subject teams offer professional learning and resources to support teachers to include all learners in their classrooms, including those students who engage with L1LPs & L2LPs. The Post-Primary Inclusive Education team offers professional learning on...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Building Projects (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: 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 the environment, which...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Staff (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: This Government is fully committed to ensuring that every child has a positive school experience, with access to qualified and engaged teachers who are dedicated to supporting their learning. This remains a top priority. My Department regularly consults with key stakeholders to address critical issues like teacher supply. Further measures to strengthen the teaching workforce are being...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Staff (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: This Government is fully committed to ensuring that every child has a positive school experience, with access to qualified and engaged teachers who are dedicated to supporting their learning. As with other sectors, recruitment challenges exist in some schools. To address teacher supply issues, my Department has implemented several measures that have led to: an increase of 20% in Initial...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Irish Language (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: The school in question is located in the Gaeltacht and applied to join the Gaeltacht School Recognition Scheme when it was launched in 2017. The criteria for recognition as a Gaeltacht School are set out in circular 0034/2017 for post-primary schools. There are 11 criteria for post-primary schools, including the requirement to “deliver high quality educational experiences through Irish...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Building Projects (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: As the Deputy may be aware, the purpose of the Summer Works Scheme (SWS) is to enable individual school authorities to undertake small-scale building works on a devolved basis and, ideally, can be carried out during the summer months or at other times that avoid disrupting the operation of the school. The SWS operates on a multi-annual basis for a number of categories and was last opened for...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Transport (27 Feb 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 to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country. These daily trips cover over 100 million kilometres. This figure includes over...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Building Projects (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: As the deputy may be aware, the purpose of the Emergency Works Scheme (EWS) is to provide funding specifically for unforeseen emergencies, or to provide funding to facilitate inclusion and access for pupils with special educational needs. 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...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Curriculum (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: There are two options for Physical Education (PE) at Senior Cycle – Leaving Certificate Physical Education (LCPE), which is an examinable subject and the Senior Cycle Physical Education (SCPE) framework which is non-examinable. Introduced on a phased basis in 2018 to 64 schools, LCPE is now being offered by 448 schools around the country. The Senior Cycle Physical Education (SCPE)...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Period Poverty (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: I propose to take Questions Nos. 233 and 234 together. The recently published Programme for Government, Securing Ireland’s Future, includes the commitment to provide free period products in schools to ensure no student is held back due to period poverty. Menstrual education is supported in the SPHE curriculum at primary level in a number of strands, including the...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Costs (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: My Department is aware of the issues raised by the Deputy in relation to the school project delivered. Department officials are liaising with the design team to resolve the issues and will be in contact with the school and their patron in due course when the information is available.

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Schools Building Projects (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: I wish to advise the Deputy that the requirement for school places is kept under on-going review in the context of constantly evolving information on population, enrolments and residential development activity. I can assure the Deputy that the provision of school places to meet the needs of children and young people at primary and post primary level, including those with special educational...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Curriculum (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: My Department and I are fully committed to developing knowledge and understanding of Traveller culture and history in schools, which will help build a recognition of the important value of Traveller culture and history to this country and help to improve a sense of belonging for Traveller children in schools. In order to capture what the Traveller community identifies as being key aspects of...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Funding (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: My Department is committed to providing funding to recognised primary and post-primary schools in the Free Education Scheme by way of per capita grants. The two main grants are the capitation grant to cater for day-to-day running costs such as heating, lighting, cleaning, insurance and general up-keep, and the ancillary grant to cater for the cost of employing ancillary services staff....

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Teaching Qualifications (27 Feb 2025)

Helen McEntee: The Teaching Council registers teachers under the Teaching Council Act 2001-2015 and in line with the Teaching Council Registration Regulations, 2016. As set out in the Schedule of the Regulations, the Council registers teachers under five routes of registration: Route 1 - Primary, Route 2 - Post-primary, Route 3 - Further Education, Route 4 - Other and Route 5 - Student Teacher. The minimum...