Paddy McHugh (Galway East, Independent)
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Question 510: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the additional resources she is planning to put in place to assist national school principals to cope with extra duties imposed on them by recent legislation in relation to education for people with disabilities and health and safety; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [18301/06]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I do acknowledge and appreciate that the post of school principal is of critical importance in the management of primary education. In recent years many improvements have been made to assist principal teachers in the performance of their duties and to relieve their administrative burden.

Up until the 1999/2000 school year, principals were released from teaching duties to become an administrative principal where the school had a staffing of eight or more mainstream class teachers. From the commencement of the 2000/2001 school year, administrative principals were appointed to ordinary schools with seven mainstream class teachers. In addition, smaller schools with a principal plus eleven or more teachers when ex-quota posts were counted could appoint an additional teacher to facilitate the principal take on administrative duties. Further improvements were granted to this provision in the 2001/2002 school year when the staffing requirement was reduced to principal plus ten or more teachers and in the 2002/2003 school year to principal plus nine or more teachers.

The scheme of release time was introduced for the 2000/2001 school year. This scheme enables teaching principals of primary schools to be released from their teaching duties for a specified number of days annually to undertake administrative leadership and management functions. The number of days release time allowed varies between 14 and 22 and is determined by the number of mainstream class teachers in the school. Paid substitution is provided by my Department for the days that principals are on release time. Following discussion with the relevant interests, my Department has decided to introduce, on a pilot basis, a system whereby a fully qualified primary school teacher may be employed to act as nominated substitute teacher for the Principals in a cluster of schools taking release days. Twenty clusters have been established under the pilot scheme. The position will be monitored by my Department during the pilot.

Arising from the implementation of the PCW Agreement, significant improvements were introduced to the management structure of primary schools by the allocation of additional posts of responsibility. These middle-management posts — deputy principal, assistant principal and special duties teacher are members of the management team of the school and are paid significant allowances in respect of their duties. It is a matter for the Boards of Management of schools to delegate functions to post of responsibility holders. The number of post holders ranges from two posts of responsibility in a two teacher school to, for example, 20 posts of responsibility in a 40 teacher school.

In addition to the above, funding to primary schools for secretarial and caretaking services has increased from €102 per pupil in 2002 to €139 per pupil in the current school year. My Department is currently engaged in the development of a computerised on-line system for the submission of claims for the payment of certain categories of teachers. The implementation of this project should help to further reduce the administrative burden on principal teachers.