Arthur Morgan
Question:91 Mr. Morgan asked the Minister for Education and Science his plans to provide more resources to school principals to enable them to meet their increasing administrative workload. [5297/04]
View answerThursday, 19 February 2004
Questions (99)
Written answers
In recent years many improvements have been made to assist principal teachers in the performance of their duties and to relieve their administrative burden.
Until the 1999-2000 school year, principals were released from teaching duties to become an administrative principal where the school had eight or more mainstream class teachers. From the commencement of the 2000-01 school year, administrative principals were appointed to ordinary schools with seven mainstream class teachers and in schools with a principal plus 11 or more teachers including ex-quota posts. Further improvements were granted in the 2001-02 school year when schools were allowed to appoint an administrative principal where there were six mainstream class teachers. The provisions were further enhanced for the 2002-03 school year whereby administrative principals can be appointed to schools with a large number of ex-quota posts where there is a principal plus nine or more teachers in the school.
The scheme of release time was introduced for the 2000-01 school year. This enables teaching principals of primary schools to be released from their teaching duties for a specified number of days annually to undertake administrative leadership and management functions. The number of days release time allowed varies between 14 and 22 and is determined by the number of mainstream class teachers in the school. My Department provides paid substitution for the days that principals are on release time. Arising from the implementation of the PCW agreement significant improvements were introduced to the management structure of primary schools by the allocation of additional posts of responsibility. It is a matter for the boards of management of schools to delegate functions to posts of responsibility holders. The number of these posts ranges from two in a two teacher school to, for example, 20 in a 40 teacher school.
In addition, funding to primary schools for secretarial and caretaking services has increased from €50.79 per pupil in the 200-01 school year, to €127 per pupil in the current year school year. My Department is developing a computerised on-line system for the submission of claims for the payment of certain categories of teachers. The implementation of this project should help to further reduce the administrative burden on principal teachers.
Question No. 92 answered with QuestionNo. 81.
Question No. 93 answered with QuestionNo. 48.