Cathal Crowe
Question:56. Deputy Cathal Crowe asked the Minister for Education if she will give consideration to the disbandment of Croke Park hours for teachers; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [18152/24]
View answerWednesday, 24 April 2024
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Written answers
Croke Park Hours were introduced in 2010 to all Public Servants under the Public Service Agreement 2010-2014 and under this agreement teachers agreed to work an additional one hour per week of non-class contact activities over the course of a school year. The Croke Park hours are 33 additional hours a year at post primary (36 hours at primary) worked by teachers. These hours were reviewed under subsequent Public Service Pay Agreements including Haddington Road and Lansdowne Road Agreements. These hours are used within the school system to facilitate certain essential activities involving the entire teaching staff or groups of teachers to take place. Examples include staff meetings, parent-teacher meetings, school planning, subject planning and mandated Continuous Professional Development, pre and post school supervision, policy development and in-service arrangements, but this is not an exhaustive list of duties. Utilisation of the additional hours for these purposes has practically eliminated school closures which were previously necessary for these activities.
Under the Haddington Road Agreement, it was agreed that up to 5 of the hours required of primary and post primary teachers under the Croke Park Agreement could be used for planning and development work, on other than a whole school basis. Under the Lansdowne Road Agreement, the revision agreed under the Haddington Road Agreement was revised to allow for up to 10 hours of the 33 hours at primary and 36 hours at post primary to be used for planning and development on an “other than whole” school basis.
Any proposal to amend or remove these hours would need to be considered in detail by the relevant industrial relations mechanisms in the education sector. Should teachers cease working these hours, schools would be forced to again close for these activities, resulting in interruption to tuition time for students and significant inconvenience for parents. It would result in a decrease in class contact time and reduce the quality of educational experience for students and create further problems within an already confined time limit of the school year.