Eoin Ó Broin
Question:222. Deputy Eoin Ó Broin asked the Minister for Education the steps a school should take in cases in which no substitute teacher can be sourced in view of the shortage of substitute teachers for schools. [51887/21]
View answerThursday, 21 October 2021
Questions (222)
Written answers
The recruitment and appointment of teachers to fill teaching posts is a matter for the individual school authority, subject to procedures agreed under Section 24 of the Education Act 1998 (as amended by the Education (Amendment) Act 2012).
In accordance with Department Circulars 0044/2019 and 31/2011, schools are required to employ appropriately qualified and registered teachers and ensure that unemployed teachers should be offered employment in preference to those who have retired.
Teacher allocations to all schools are approved annually by my Department in accordance with established rules based on recognised pupil enrolment. The criteria for the allocation of posts are communicated to school managements annually and are available on my Department's website.
In accordance with Circular 50/2021, primary schools should have plans in place to access substitutes in the following sequence:
- Supply panel if the school is part of a supply panel cluster arrangement,
- School’s own panel of regular substitutes,
- National substitute service,
- Administrative Principal if applicable
- Local arrangements that facilitate the pupils to be supervised in a manner that does not involve them being split between existing classes in classrooms
A range of measures have been put in place to provide enhanced substitute cover in the context of Covid-19. These include a major expansion of the Primary Schools Substitute Teacher Supply Panels, which now employ almost 380 teachers and provide substitute cover to over 2,500 primary schools across the country. Further work is underway to ascertain if there are ways the operation of the panels can be enhanced to help with substitute teacher supply.
The Supply Panels work alongside the existing methods of sourcing substitute teachers, such as Sub Seeker the national substitution portal service for primary and post primary schools, operated by the Irish Primary Principals' Network and developed in accordance with my Department's Teacher Supply Action Plan. Schools can also make local arrangements to have their own regular substitutes to call on if needed.
Measures are also underway to raise awareness of the availability of substitute work in schools. There are over 111, 000 teachers on the Teaching Council register each of whom has been emailed directly by the Council to raise awareness to the current teacher substitute challenges and where possible to make themselves available, through Sub Seeker, for substitute work
My Department has also adjusted its payroll operational arrangements so that the restriction on the number of days that teachers on career break may be employed as substitutes has been suspended and teachers who are job sharing are allowed to work additional hours.
As in 2020/21, flexible school placement arrangements are being implemented to enhance the availability of post-primary Professional Master of Education (PME) student teachers to fill short term substitute vacancies. My Department and the Teaching Council are also planning to meet with the providers of primary initial teacher education (ITE) in the coming days to explore how flexibility in primary ITE programme delivery could facilitate additional substitute supply.
My Department is engaging on an ongoing basis with stakeholders to analyse the demand for substitution and continue to identify measures to improve the availability of substitutes at this time.