Kathleen Funchion
Question:195. Deputy Kathleen Funchion asked the Minister for Education and Skills the estimated cost to provide one administration day a week to teaching principals across the primary school network. [38762/18]
View answerTuesday, 25 September 2018
Questions (195)
Written answers
Building on measures in previous budgets to enhance school leadership, Budget 2018 made €0.4 million available to fund almost 4600 additional release days for teaching principals in primary schools. This additional funding has provided an increase in the number of release days available to teaching principals in the 2018/19 school year to 17, 23 or 29 days depending on the size of the school.
I recently announced an extension to the arrangements for schools with teaching principals to cluster their release days into full-time posts, with one teacher covering the release days of all the schools in the cluster. Up to 50 principal release cluster posts will be put in place for the current school year. This measure will assist teaching principals to more effectively plan their release days for the benefit of the school.
Enabling teaching principals to have one release day per week would cost approximately €12 million per annum. Any additional increase in the number of release days will be considered as part of the next annual budgetary process alongside the many other demands from the education sector.