Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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933. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she is aware that the current ban on promotion in our national schools is seriously affecting schools and their ability to deliver a quality education; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [37515/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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While there has been a moratorium on recruitment across other sectors in the public service, this has not applied to teaching and shows the commitment this Government has to educating our future generations. We have a growing population of young people in this country and despite the difficult financial circumstances we face as a country, we prioritised education so that the number of teachers we have in the system has also grown in order to protect pupil teacher ratios. Between this year and last year this has involved an increase of around 2,300 teachers in our primary and post-primary schools. This is a very significant investment at a time of scarce resources.

The Deputy will be aware that I have made provision in Budget 2016 for some 2,260 additional teaching posts for our primary and post primary schools next year. These posts will provide for an improvement in the staffing schedules at primary and post primary levels, enhance the leadership and management roles of deputy principals at post-primary level by reducing their teaching time, an improvement to the scheme of release time for principal teachers at primary level and additional resource posts to meet special education needs.

At primary level, teaching principals may take a certain number of days 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. Under the current arrangements the number of principal release days ranges between 14 and 22 days depending on the size of the school. Budget 2016 will increase those days to range between 15 and 25 days, effective from the start of the 2016/17 school year.

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.