Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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528. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if principals of primary schools will be allowed to use their release days in conjunction with resource hours to create an additional post for their school as the system does not allow for the best use of existing resources; if she will consider the merit of such a situation as it would eliminate further red tape in hiring sub-positions on numerous occasions throughout the year and would lead to greater instructional continuity; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24561/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Principal duties in small to medium sized schools are carried out by teaching principals. Teaching principals are provided with release time 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 so that the principal can come out of the classroom. Under the current arrangements the number of days that teaching principals may take as release time in each school year ranges between 14 and 22 days depending on the size of the school.

The NCSE generally announces the sanction of resource hours to schools in May and October each year. My Department introduced reforms to the teacher allocation process for resource hours in recent years which included the allocation of a network of permanent posts in base schools to cater for NCSE approved resource hours for individual pupils in schools. 83% of all NCSE approved resource teaching hours in the 2014/15 school year were allocated to schools that had permanent resource base posts. Schools with a resource base post are required to co-operate with their neighbouring schools to ensure that any surplus capacity in the (25 hour) resource post(s) is made available to neighbouring schools to meet their NCSE approved resource hour requirements. Where a school has less than 25 hours that cannot be met from other schools, sanction will be given for part time hours.

Given that there are separate structures and arrangements in place in relation to NCSE hours and given that such allocations are subject to change each year and for some schools within each year it is not possible to combine these hours with principal release days in the manner suggested by the Deputy.

Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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529. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will re-introduce posts of responsibility for primary schools; if she will provide details of the cost of this; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [24562/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Economic constraints and the moratorium on filling posts of responsibility, 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.

Rather than simply looking at re-introducing posts of responsibility it is important to carefully consider the needs of school leaders and how they might be addressed. The Department is engaging with the management bodies at post-primary level on this issue and will, in due course, also engage with the management bodies at primary level.

I am aware of the workload issue and the pressures on Principal 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 publication recently 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.