Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
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267. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills to set out the status of the moratorium on posts of responsibility within schools, including his plans to change this; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9652/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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There are limited alleviation arrangements in place for schools that are acutely affected by the impact of the moratorium at Assistant Principal level. These arrangements are mainly focused at post-primary level. However, it is fair to say that before the moratorium, notwithstanding the fact that one out of every two teachers held a management allowance the workload issue and the pressures on Principals and Deputy Principals existed.

Simply lifting the moratorium as extra funding becomes available in future years is not the best way of improving how school leadership is distributed in our schools. School leaders have a key role to play in determining the shape of our schools and student outcomes. Leading on curricular change and change management are key challenges for every school leader. The challenge for schools and the Department is therefore to build a leadership partnership that is fit for 21st century Ireland and school context.

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.

As part of the 2,260 additional teaching posts announced in Budget 2016, 250 of these posts are being provided to second level schools to enable Deputy Principals to be freed up from teaching time and be more fully available to assist the school principal with the leadership of the school. Up to now only schools with at least with over 500 students received an allocation to free up the Deputy Principal.

With effect from 01 September 2016, second level schools with over 400 students will receive an allocation that will bring those schools in line with the schools that have over 500 pupils where the Deputy Principal is fully freed up. A pro rata allocation of additional hours to support school leadership will also be provided to the schools with 400 or fewer students enrolled. At primary level Budget 2016 provides for additional release days for teaching principals to range between 15 and 25 days depending on the size of the school and effective from the start of the 2016/17 school year.