Seán Conlan (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

231. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will reverse her Department's decision to place a permanent teacher at a school (details supplied) in County Cavan onto the panel, in circumstances where the school has in excess of 25 hours allocated for resource and learning support, and has now lost two permeant teachers in one year. [12657/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The staffing and redeployment arrangements for primary schools for the 2015/16 school year are set out in Department Circular 0005/2015 which is available on my Department's website at www.education.gov.ie. The core function of the redeployment arrangements is to facilitate the redeployment of all surplus permanent teachers with effect from 1 September, 2015 to other schools that have vacancies. The redeployment of all surplus permanent teachers is key to the Department's ability to manage within its payroll budget and ceiling on teacher numbers.

There is no change to the mainstream classroom staffing of the school referred to by the Deputy for the 2015/16 school year. However, the school has had a reduction in its GAM/EAL (learning/language support) allocation to 15 hours.

Where schools do not have sufficient GAM/EAL hours to create a full-time post, a process is in place for such schools to enter into cluster arrangements with neighbouring schools. This has been the case in St. Patrick's National School for a number of years. Following the school led process for clustering GAM/EAL hours, a Department led clustering process is initiated for any remaining hours in schools that have not been clustered. My Department has notified the school of such a cluster arrangement and that it will continue to be a base school for a shared GAM/EAL post for the 2015/16 school year. As a consequence there is no redeployment panel implication.