My recent announcement referred to by the Deputy introduced a range of new measures to improve the capacity of schools to cater for the educational needs of all their pupils and will assist their principals in their work.
Some principals have particularly heavy workloads arising from the size of their school. Others carry additional duties arising from the fact that in addition to their mainstream classes they have a significant number of special classes containing children with complex special needs. I am responding to these needs by the introduction of these new measures.
The new measures include:
The allocation of additional teachers to allow all deputy principals in schools with 24 or more mainstream class teachers operate as administrative deputy principals;
The allocation of additional teachers to allow deputy principals in mainstream schools that, in addition to their ordinary mainstream class teachers, also have five or more special classes for children with the more complex, low incidence, special needs, to operate as administrative deputy principals;
Where a school has a principal and four or five mainstream class teachers also has a specialist autism unit established under approval of the National Council for Special Education, the principal will be appointed on an administrative basis.
The role of the special needs assistant (SNA) is essentially a care one in supporting pupils with assessed special educational needs. The number and types of non-teaching staff in a primary school does not impact on the allocation of post of responsibility holders in a school, i.e., principal, deputy principal and special duties teachers.