Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent)
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54. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if the situation regarding a school (details supplied) in County Donegal will be addressed in view of the fact that it is still without an administrative principal despite having seven teachers and eight SNAs on its staff and is only one of two schools in Ireland facing this situation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22436/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The criteria for the appointment of an administrative principal to a school are based on the school’s enrolment. The school referred to by the Deputy does not meet the criteria.

Each teaching principal receives a number of days to take as release time in order to undertake administrative functions. Under these arrangements, my Department pays for a substitute teacher to be employed by the school on these release days. Under the current arrangements the number of days that principal teachers may take as release time in each school year is 15, 20 or 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 almost 4600 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 to 17, 23 or 29 days depending on the size of the school.

I recently announced an extension to the arrangements for schools with teaching principals to cluster their release days into full-time posts, with one teacher covering the release days of all the schools in the cluster. Up to 50 principal release cluster posts will be put in place for the 2018/19 school year. This measure will assist teaching principals to more effectively plan their release days for the benefit of the school.

Any additional increase in the number of release days will be considered as part of the next annual budgetary process alongside the many other demands from the education sector.