Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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82. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated full year 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. [19415/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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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.

Building on measures in previous budgets to enhance school leadership, Budget 2018 made €0.4 million available to fund additional release days for teaching principals in primary schools. This additional funding will see an increase in the number of release days available to teaching principals in the 2018/19 school year.

Enabling teaching principals to have one release day per week would cost approximately €12 million per annum.