Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will consider permitting four teacher schools who have 20 learning support hours to combine their support hours with their resource teacher hours in order to make a full-time post in order to avoid teacher fragmentation between these schools and to prevent wastage and duplication in relation to teachers having to travel between various schools; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11189/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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Shared full-time posts and travel between schools is a long standing feature of the primary system. There were a plethora of long-standing clustering arrangements in place which were not the most practical, efficient or cost effective way to allocate resources. The new arrangements introduced in the current school year are designed to address the limitations of the previous arrangements. Under the reforms to the teacher allocation process introduced for the current school year, schools were empowered to cluster and arrange their General Allocation Model resources in a manner that best suits their local needs, including in a manner that reduces travel between schools. This school led process has resulted in over 97% of the overall GAM allocation being in full-time stand-alone or shared posts.

Aside from the reforms to the GAM, the allocation of resource hours for individual pupils vary from year to year. This is because of the ongoing individual assessment of pupils through the NCSE must operate on a later timescale. The new arrangements involve the allocation of a network of permanent posts in base schools and again are designed to make the system work more smoothly at school level. 85% of all NCSE approved resource teaching hours in the 2012/13 school year were allocated to schools that had resource base posts.

The staffing arrangements for the coming school year 2013/14 are outlined in Circular 0013/2013 which is available on the Department website. When the allocation and redeployment process is completed later in the Summer schools that have complied with the arrangements outlined in the Circular will be given some discretion to operate, where possible, their own temporary local arrangements in relation to the day to day work arrangements of teachers in full-time shared posts. These arrangements are aimed at minimising any time lost in travelling between schools.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will ensure that his Department addresses any issue with regard to the clustering of schools for learning support hours, that in cases where schools were unable to reach agreement locally on clusters that his Department adopt a policy ensuring that schools with the higher number of hours would be assigned as base teachers; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11209/13]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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The staffing arrangements for the 2013/14 school year are set out in Circular 0013/2013 which is available on the Department website. Schools with hours available for clustering have until 15 March, 2013 to enter into a cluster arrangement to achieve a full-time post through sharing arrangements with other neighbouring school(s). Following the school led process for clustering GAM/EAL hours a Department led clustering process will be initiated after 15 March, 2013 where appropriate with any remaining hours in schools that have not been clustered.