Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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403. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the steps she is taking to address reports of staff exhaustion in schools, particularly among SNAs and teaching staff, due to a lack of adequate supports and resources during the current school term; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [33842/25]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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To assist schools in terms of Wellbeing supports, my Department has put in place an Occupational Health Strategy as a supportive resource for staff and leaders in schools. The aim of the Occupational Health Strategy is to promote the health and wellbeing of employees in the workplace, with a strong focus on prevention. The Occupational Health Strategy comprises the Employee Assistance Service and the Occupational Health Service.

The Employee Assistance Service is provided by Spectrum.life and is a self-referral service where school staff have access to a dedicated free-phone confidential helpline. The service is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The helpline number is 1800-411057.

The Employee Assistance Service provides advice to all school staff on a range of issues including wellbeing, bereavement, conflict and mediation. Where appropriate, short-term counselling is available to all school staff and their family members.

The service provides support and advice to managers to help them deal with health and wellbeing issues personally and in the workplace. It also provides a series of webinars and presentations to promote wellbeing in schools. To enhance the supports that are available, Spectrum Life has developed a comprehensive package of supports specifically aimed at school leaders which is currently being rolled out.

A Wellbeing in Education platform bringing together resources for school staff, students and parents to support wellbeing and resilience has been included on gov.ie (www.gov.ie/en/department-of-education/campaigns/wellbeing-in-education/). This platform provides links to an extensive range of resources available to schools from the Department’s support services and agencies and the HSE and the Department of Health.

The Department introduced a new leadership framework in 2018 which allows for flexibility in identifying and prioritising the evolving leadership and management needs of schools. This shared or distributive leadership model supports school leaders in the overall management and operation of schools. It provides for the assignment and re-assignment of post holders to specific roles and responsibilities to meet a school’s evolving needs.

Today, 1 in 3 primary school teachers hold management positions. In budget 2024, this Department provided for an additional 1,000 posts of responsibility (Assistant Principal II) for the 2024/25 school year. In budget 2025, the Department provided for a further 1,000 posts of responsibility (Assistant Principal II) for the 2025/2026 school year.

My Department is currently looking toward Education 2050 and how we take the best elements of our schools and build on this to create a system for future generations. The small schools project is an example of school communities coming together to explore and trail new ideas for the future including how admin supports can assist teaching principals with their administrative duties. It is acknowledged by my department that implementing policies while teaching can be challenging.

The project has brought small schools together in local clusters, enabling them to collaborate and identify common challenges and trial innovative solutions. New ideas are being trialled to determine whether these might help to make the role of a teaching principal and small schools more sustainable. The project has shown that small schools collaborating and working together offers promise for the future.

The schools participating across the six clusters in this project have developed good working relationships and have already provided valuable insights and ideas into supports that can be developed and replicated across small schools and I am delighted that the project is continuing for a further two years to allow further time for current ideas to be developed and some new ideas to emerge.

Effective school leadership, and governance, means effective schools. The existing models of leadership and governance of our schools, whilst very effective, also carry challenges for teachers, school principals, as well as boards of management, and the sector as a whole. Recognising these challenges, my department is now putting an increased focus on leadership and governance at school level and across the sector nationally.

My officials, in conjunction and consultation with education partners will examine current policy and practice to see what elements are serving school communities well and what elements we can improve on.