Class contact for teachers in second level schools is 22 hours per week. In the case of vocational, community and comprehensive schools the class contact hours of assistant principals are reduced by four.
The teacher allocation process in the vocational and community and comprehensive sectors involves an initial allocation based upon enrolments (and where relevant projected enrolment) together with a subsequent appeal process. This latter process is geared to deal with any difficulties encountered by individual schools or vocational education committees in delivering the full curriculum to their students.
Arising from the PCW agreement on teachers' pay and conditions, approximately 500 new assistant principal posts were created in vocational, community and comprehensive schools. The PCW agreement did not provide for a specific additional teaching allocation to be made to school authorities arising from the creation of assistant principal posts. However, while these posts could result in a notional loss of four hours class contact per post, I have met with representatives of management, teacher unions and parents to discuss this matter. I indicated to them that my Department would consider the position of individual community and comprehensive schools and vocational education committees in the context of curricular concessions within available resources.
