Brian Walsh (Galway West, Independent)
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962. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills her plans to lower the enrolment threshold for an administrative principal in Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools 2 in urban areas; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [21706/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The criteria for the appointment of an administrative principal to a school, which are enrolment related, are set out in Appendix B of Circular, 0005/2015 Staffing Arrangements in Primary Schools for the 2015/16 school year and is available on the Department website. Circular 25/02 which is available on the Department website outlines the number of days that teaching principals may take as release time in a school year in order to assist them fulfilling their principal duties. Under these arrangements my Department pays for a substitute teacher to be employed by a school to facilitate administrative functions to be undertaken by the teaching principal.

I am aware of the workload issue and the pressures on Principals teachers. My Department has done work at helping to ease the administrative burden on school principals. The development and introduction of the primary online database is a significant step forward in this regard. A further step forward was the recent publication of Department Circular 0033/2015 which updates and simplifies the manner in which primary schools can maintain pupil enrolment and attendance records following the introduction of the primary online database.

Economic constraints and the moratorium on recruitment albeit alleviated to some extent for schools, have presented challenges within the education sector. They also provide an opportunity to review the role of the principal so that our principals are leaders of learning, and to reconfigure the middle management structure to support principals in their role, ensuring ownership of responsibility rather than tasks, thereby building expertise and supporting a career path within the profession.

The Department, in consultation with the representative management bodies has commenced an exploration of the opportunities to support and thereby advance our understanding of the needs of school leaders and how they might be addressed.