Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for her kind comments. In respect of difficulties in filling teaching positions, the teacher supply steering group was established in March 2018 and the group is chaired by the Secretary General of the Department of Education and Skills. The steering group leads on the identification of issues, the development of a programme of actions on teacher supply and oversees its implementation. An implementation group supports the work of the steering group. The group is also supported in its work by a number of working groups which consider and report on particular issues. The working groups report to the implementation group.

A number of specific measures have been taken to increase the pool of available substitute teachers, including the establishment, in the 2019-2020 school year, of a substitute teacher supply panel scheme on a pilot basis. The pilot scheme has six base schools employing teachers on a fixed-term basis so as to provide substitute cover to up to 90 schools. These supply panels were set up to work alongside the existing methods of sourcing substitute teachers, whether through a school's own panel of regular substitutes or the national substitution portal service.

In July, the Department of Education and Skills published the report, Reopening Our Schools: The Roadmap for the Full Return to School, and announced a funding package of more than €370 million for schools to supports its implementation. Among the package of supports is the extension of the substitute teacher supply panel. Additional teachers are being provided to support the safe and sustainable reopening of primary schools in order to provide enhanced substitution and eliminate the need to mix classes when a teacher is absent.

The scheme has been expanded from the pilot scheme of six base schools to more than 100 base schools, providing substitute cover to approximately 2,300 schools across the country. More than 300 additional teaching posts have been allocated to this scheme. The Department has worked closely with our partners on expanding teacher supply panels. The base schools were first identified in collaboration with the INTO and primary management bodies. The INTO and primary management bodies made contact with these schools with a view to being a base for that location. In forming the supply panel clusters, the Department's geographical information system, GIS, identified the receiving schools based on distance from the base school.

The supply panel teaching posts were allocated to each supply panel based on the number of schools in the cluster and the number of permanent teaching positions to be serviced by the scheme. Currently, there are 115 substitute teacher supply panels nationwide and these panels operate in accordance with the terms and conditions as outlined in Circular 59/2019, which is available on the Department of Education and Skills website.

I will bring the particular issues raised by the Senator to the attention of the Minister for Education and Skills in the context of her own particular area. I met with a deputation of teachers from my own area of Mullingar, in the context of the budgetary negotiations, and they were impressed by how the system is working in their locality. If there are teething problems or issues with the scheme, we can thrash them out, and I will gladly bring the Senator's comments to the Minister's attention.