Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 6 October 2009
1108 Deputy Brian Hayes asked the Minister for Education and Science the reason the grant for a secretary and caretaker come at the end of March when the school year is almost over; his views, in view of the fact that he has by the end of October all of the relevant information required to provide for this grant, or providing for prompt payment in this area; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33046/09]
View answerThe Deputy is referring to funding arrangements for primary schools. The way in which primary schools are funded takes account of the fact that the State's accounting period is based on a calendar year, while schools traditionally operate on the academic year commencing in September. Thus, primary schools receive capitation funding in January and June, and the ancillary services grant in March.
I have consistently said that it is my intention to streamline and rationalise the different grant schemes that provide funding to primary schools, both for ease of administration and to ensure that school management has greater autonomy over the funding provided.
Therefore, capitation funding provided for general running costs, and funding provided for caretaking and secretarial services may be regarded as a common grant from which the Board of Management can allocate according to its own priorities. In due course, both grant schemes will be merged. In the interim, both grants will continue to be paid according to existing timelines and calculated separately as heretofore.
With regard to the availability of enrolment data, I wish to advise the Deputy that the primary census has up to now been a paper-based process; my Department would receive a set of paper forms from over 3200 primary and special schools every year. Each form must be manually logged and checked and corrected with input from the school where necessary and then entered manually into my Department's database. This process takes a number of months due to the number of schools involved. For this reason, data for all schools at primary level does not normally become available until close to the end of the academic year.
In order to reduce the processing time involved, a spreadsheet form has been introduced for the 2009/2010 census which can be returned to my Department by email. This reduces the workload involved in processing the forms, as totals and checks are automatic, and the data can be loaded automatically to the database.
It should be noted also that it has been the case in previous years that approximately 25-30% of returns for primary schools are still outstanding by the end of October deadline, which can add a further delay to the processing time for those schools that make a late return.
