Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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45. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills her plans to rebuild a middle management structure in our primary and secondary schools. [43917/15]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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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. Last week, I formally launched the newly established Centre for School Leadership (CSL). The Centre's responsibilities will cover the continuum of professional development for school leaders, from pre-appointment training and induction of newly appointed principals, to continuing professional development throughout careers. The Centre is operating on a partnership basis between the Department of Education and Skills, the Irish Primary Principals' Network (IPPN) and the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD). The partnership will have many benefits for the profession in terms of the quality of training programmes, coordination of provision, and increased accessibility.

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.