Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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178. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated cost of providing one release day per week for teaching principals for schools by numbers attending (details supplied). [27531/18]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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The criteria for the appointment of an administrative principal to a school, which are enrolment related, are set out in Appendix B of Circular 0010/2018. The enrolment required for administrative principal in ordinary schools, and gaelscoileanna and schools in the Gaeltacht is 176 pupils, or 113 if operating a specialist autism unit. 

Schools that do not meet these criteria have teaching principals.  Recently published Circular 40/2018 is available on the Department’s website and 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.

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.

The Teacher Allocation section of my Department are currently processing these applications and schools are being notified as the cluster posts are approved. 

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.

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