Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent)
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537. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if her attention has been drawn to ongoing concerns in a school (details supplied) in relation to an inability to get substitute teachers to cover staff absences; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [52788/21]

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 the national substitution portal service Sub Seeker, 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. There are over 111, 000 teachers on the Teaching Council register each of whom has been emailed directly by the Council to raise awareness to the current teacher substitute challenges and where possible to make themselves available, through Sub Seeker, for substitute work

For the current school year, changes have been made to the Career Break Scheme to permit teachers on career break to carry out unlimited substitute work. Changes have also been made to the Job Sharing Scheme to permit job sharing teachers carry out substitute work on the days they are rostered off.

The Department and the Teaching Council are engaging with the providers of primary initial teacher education (ITE) to explore how flexibility in ITE programme delivery could facilitate additional substitute supply.

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.