Vol. 441 No. 5
24 Mr. J. Bruton asked the Minister for Education the criteria for the appointment of a school secretary to primary and secondary schools; and the reason schools which presently share a secretary and who have the numbers to qualify individually for secretarial positions are being refused such appointments.
Primary and secondary schools receive grant assistance towards the cost of secretarial services under two schemes operated by my Department.
One scheme, introduced in 1977 provides grants in respect of the remuneration of school secretaries employed by schools on a full-time or shared basis. The school is recouped the full salary costs including employers PRSI contributions. Schools that originally qualified continue to receive grants under the scheme but no other schools have been added to it since September 1992.
The second scheme was introduced on foot of a commitment in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress to provide more schools with clerical services. This is being done by way of a supplementary capitation grant. Individual schools have discretion about how precisely to utilise this grant to procure secretarial assistance. It is based on the school enrolment and is not salary based. At present all new provision is under the terms of this capitation based scheme.
The current phase of the programme has extended assistance to primary schools with single enrolments of 400 pupils or over, schools with disadvantaged status of 200 pupils or over and schools of 12 teachers or over catering for children with special needs.
Secondary schools with enrolments of 200 recognised pupils or more are eligible for a grants towards the employment of clerical assistance.
The Deputy refers to the position of schools sharing a clerk typist under the original scheme. Such schools were excluded from consideration under the capitation based scheme irrespective of their enrolments because the view was taken that it was preferable to use available resources to target schools that had no provision at all.
