Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 24 April 2013
101. Deputy Róisín Shortall asked the Minister for Education and Skills the position regarding the mainstream staffing for 2013/14 in respect of a school (details supplied) in Dublin 11; if he will outline his intentions with regard to subsuming and retaining concessionary legacy teaching posts which form part of the current and future staffing arrangement for this school; and if there is an appeal mechanism to appeal against this decision. [19453/13]
View answerThe staffing arrangements for the 2013/14 school year are set out in Primary Circular 0013/2013 which is available on my Department's website. Following the Government's decision of 21 February 2012, the school to which the Deputy refers was among the schools which retained disadvantaged legacy posts from previous disadvantage schemes.
As the Deputy may be aware, a range of factors contribute to determining the staffing requirement for individual schools including changes to enrolment and the reforms to the teacher allocation process in 2012. As the teaching allocation to schools, including disadvantage legacy posts, are enrolment based, this determines whether schools gain or lose teaching posts from year to year. Some schools seemed to be under the impression that the Government decision of February 2012 in relation to legacy posts, implied that they would retain the number of legacy posts which they had in the 2011/12 school year. I wish to clarify that legacy posts are retained in schools from year to year, only where warranted, based on the enrolment of the previous 30th September. The individual schemes such as Breaking the cycle, Giving children an Even Break and the Disadvantage Areas Scheme no longer operate.
The enrolment at the school in question, which is a DEIS Band 2 school currently has two legacy posts. The school's enrolment increased slightly on 30 September 2012 over its previous year's enrolment. As a result of this increase, one of the legacy teaching posts, which is part of the current staffing (2012/13 school year), will be subsumed as part of the mainstream staffing for the 2013/14 school year. The school will retain one legacy teaching post for the 2013/14 school year. In summary, the school in question will retain the same number of classroom teaching posts for the 2013/14 school year as it has for the current school year, operating a more favourable pupil teacher ratio than other comparable DEIS schools while not exceeding this entitlement for the 2013/14 school year.
