Carol Nolan (Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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243. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills when the report on teacher supply will be published; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16198/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy is referring to the report of the Technical Working Group (TWG) which was set up by the Teaching Council to formulate advice on teacher supply. I intend to publish the TWG’s report shortly.

The aim of my Department's policy is to achieve a balance between the supply of, and demand for, teachers. The Deputy will see from the Report that this is particularly complex at post primary level, because there is currently no central mechanism for matching the overall subject need requirements of schools with output from the initial teacher education programme providers and, in addition, schools have significant autonomy in relation to the mix of subjects and choices they provide for students.

The TWG's final report sets out an approach to planning which scopes out the work necessary to develop a model for forecasting teacher supply in the medium to long term.