Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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82. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills her plans to address the crisis of recruitment and substitute teachers in the major urban centres; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [50024/22]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The recruitment and appointment of teachers to fill teaching posts is a matter for the individual school authority, subject to procedures agreed under Section 24 of the Education Act 1998 (as amended by the Education (Amendment) Act 2012).

In accordance with Department Circulars 0044/2019 and 31/2011, schools are required to employ appropriately qualified and registered teachers and ensure that unemployed teachers should be offered employment in preference to those who have retired.

My Department runs a comprehensive programme of work to support the supply of both primary and post-primary teachers.

I have allocated significant additional posts to the primary substitute teacher supply panels in areas where significant challenges in sourcing substitution continue, bringing the total to 610 posts on 151 panels, covering approximately 2,800 schools, including all major urban areas.

The supply panels work alongside the existing methods of sourcing substitute teachers, such as Sub Seeker, the national substitution portal service operated by the Irish Primary Principals' Network and schools can also make local arrangements to have their own regular substitutes to call on if needed.

Newly qualified teachers (NQTs) will also represent a new source of supply in 2022/23. In excess of 3,400 primary and post-primary NQTs have had their registrations finalised by the Teaching Council to date with almost 40 further applications currently in progress.

The Teaching Council recently made regulations allowing for the registration of 3rd and 4th year undergraduate ITE students under a new registration route, Route 5 (Student Teachers).To date, in excess of 1,200 student teachers have registered with the Teaching Council with a further 70 applications still being processed. Once registered with the Council, such student teachers can be employed by a school to cover substitutable vacancies.

Following engagement with the Higher Education Authority (HEA), Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) who provide programmes for initial teacher education (ITE), put in place new ITE undergraduate programmes since 2019 in a number of post-primary priority subject areas, including Irish, mathematics, computer science and modern foreign languages.

In February 2019, my Department launched a scheme to allow post-primary schools to share teachers in priority subjects. The aim of the circular is to provide a way for schools to recruit teachers in the high demand subjects while also facilitating new teachers with a full time contract.

Turasabhaile is a service developed by the post-primary school management bodies and National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals which matches registered teachers’ resident abroad with post-primary vacancies in schools in Ireland.

The Irish Primary Principals’ Network is also developing a new central portal for the recruitment of teachers to long-term teaching positions in both primary and post-primary schools. It is anticipated that this portal will be available to schools and teachers in the coming months.

The various measures to support teacher supply are underpinned by the Teaching Transformscampaign, which promotes the teaching profession and encourages students to follow a career in teaching. The campaign uses digital, radio and video media, and is supported by a dedicated webpage, www.gov.ie/teachingtransforms.

My Department will continue, with the cooperation of the education partners, to develop and implement measures to address challenges faced by schools and to support the supply of teachers to our schools.