Principal duties in small to medium sized schools are carried out by teaching principals. Teaching principals are provided with release time in order to assist them fulfilling their principal duties. Under these arrangements my Department pays for a substitute teacher to be employed by a school so that the principal can come out of the classroom. Under the current arrangements the number of days that teaching principals may take as release time in each school year ranges between 14 and 22 days depending on the size of the school.
The NCSE generally announces the sanction of resource hours to schools in May and October each year. My Department introduced reforms to the teacher allocation process for resource hours in recent years which included the allocation of a network of permanent posts in base schools to cater for NCSE approved resource hours for individual pupils in schools. 83% of all NCSE approved resource teaching hours in the 2014/15 school year were allocated to schools that had permanent resource base posts. Schools with a resource base post are required to co-operate with their neighbouring schools to ensure that any surplus capacity in the (25 hour) resource post(s) is made available to neighbouring schools to meet their NCSE approved resource hour requirements. Where a school has less than 25 hours that cannot be met from other schools, sanction will be given for part time hours.
Given that there are separate structures and arrangements in place in relation to NCSE hours and given that such allocations are subject to change each year and for some schools within each year it is not possible to combine these hours with principal release days in the manner suggested by the Deputy.
