Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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211. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will extend the work recognised for Croke Park hours to teachers' voluntary extra curricular activities which benefit students, in view of teacher concerns regarding Croke Park hours and in recognition of teacher commitment to working beyond school hours to support students; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31121/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The Croke Park hours are part of wider productivity measures introduced under the Public Service Agreements that require all public servants to work additional time for no additional payment.

The Croke Park hours represent a real reform with significant benefits for parents and children. In schools, the Croke Park hours are additional hours worked by teachers (33 additional hours a year at post-primary and 36 hours at primary). They are a valuable resource within the school system which allow certain essential activities involving the entire teaching staff or groups of teachers to take place. These include staff meetings, parent-teacher meetings, school planning, subject planning and mandated Continuous Professional Development.

Before the Croke Park hours were introduced, these activities ate into tuition time. This meant that schools closed for full days or half days in order to carry them out, causing interruption to tuition and significant inconvenience for parents, as well as child care costs – particularly for primary parents.

It is important to note that many public servants committed significantly more hours than this under the public service agreements. Across the public services – education, health, local authorities, civil service etc. - the additional time being provided represents about 450,000 additional hours per annum or the equivalent of between 12,000 and 13,000 public service posts. That is a serious productivity benefit for the Exchequer. Replacing those hours would cost hundreds of millions of euro.

In response to concerns expressed by teacher trade unions regarding the use of the Croke Park hours, my Department agreed to carry out a review of their usage under the Lansdowne Road Agreement. This review, which also involves the school management bodies, is under way and will have regard to teacher professional judgement, system and school requirements and experience to date of best practice in the use of the hours.

The review provides for an up-front increase in the quantum of time allowed for planning and development work on other than a whole-school basis. The original Croke Park Agreement provided that all Croke Park hours would be worked on a whole-school basis. The Haddington Road Agreement provided that up to 5 of the hours could be worked on a less than whole-school basis (e.g. small groups of subject teachers). The recent agreement increased this maximum to 8 hours in September 2016 and increases it again to 10 hours in September 2017.