Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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154. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated cost of providing schools one administration day per week for teaching principals to cover the establishment of a permanent pool of teachers to replace teaching principals on their administration day. [23190/16]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy will be aware that Budget 2016 made provision 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.

Circular 12/2016, 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. Under the current arrangements the number of days that principal teachers may take as release time in each school year ranges between 15 and 25 days depending on the size of the school.

Improving these arrangements so as to enable teaching principals to have one release day per week would cost in the order of €12.5 million per annum.