Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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134. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the assistance that can be given to schools that are experiencing difficulty in obtaining substitute teachers; the plans in place to address this issue; if assistance can be given to a school (details supplied) that is experiencing a severe shortage of required substitute teachers; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [51468/21]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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A range of measures have been put in place to provide enhanced substitute cover in the context of Covid-19. These include a major expansion of the Primary Schools Substitute Teacher Supply Panels, which now employ almost 380 teachers and provide substitute cover to over 2,500 primary schools across the country. Further work is underway to ascertain if there are ways the operation of the panels can be enhanced to help with substitute teacher supply.

The Supply Panels work alongside the existing methods of sourcing substitute teachers, such as Sub Seeker the national substitution portal service for primary and post primary schools, operated by the Irish Primary Principals Network and developed in accordance with my Department's Teacher Supply Action Plan. Schools can also make local arrangements to have their own regular substitutes to call on if needed. 

Measures are also underway to raise awareness of the availability of substitute work in schools. The Teaching Council has emailed over 111,000 teachers on its register, asking any who may be available for substitute work to register with Sub Seeker.

My Department has also adjusted its payroll operational arrangements so that the restriction on the number of days that teachers on career break may be employed as substitutes has been suspended and teachers who are job sharing are allowed to work additional hours.

As in 2020/21, flexible school placement arrangements are being implemented to enhance the availability of post-primary Professional Master of Education (PME) student teachers to fill short term substitute vacancies. My Department and the Teaching Council are also planning to meet with the providers of primary initial teacher education (ITE) in the coming days to explore how flexibility in primary ITE programme delivery could facilitate additional substitute supply.

In accordance with Circular 50/21, primary schools, including the school referred to by the Deputy, should have plans in place to access substitutes in the following sequence:

- Supply panel if the school is part of a supply panel cluster arrangement,

- School’s own panel of regular substitutes,

- National substitute service,

- Administrative Principal if applicable

- Local arrangements that facilitate the pupils to be supervised in a manner that does not involve them being split between existing classes in classrooms

My Department is engaging on an ongoing basis with stakeholders to analyse the demand for substitution and to identify means to improve the availability of substitutes at this time.