Outsourcing non-educational work ‘will ease school principals shortage’

OUTSIDE professionals should be employed by the Department of Education to carry out non-educational work in primary schools and allow principals stick to their own role, an Oireachtas Committee was told yesterday.

The proposal was one of a number of solutions proposed by the Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN) to help alleviate the crisis faced by schools trying to recruit principals.

In a submission to the Oireachtas Education Committee, it said that school boards of management do not have the capacity to fully manage schools.

“We need paid, skilled professionals to manage non-educational functions such as human resources, finance, legal, construction, and information technology. In the case of smaller schools, this could be on a cluster basis,” said IPPN director Sean Cottrell.

Most of these functions are undertaken by the principals of the country’s 3,300 primary schools, the majority of whom are also full-time class teachers.

The workload and poor financial rewards are blamed by IPPN for the difficulties some schools have in filling vacancies for the principal’s job. The network told the committee of previous research which found that just two people applied for these posts when advertised last year, compared to an average of six applications per job in 1996.

An IPPN survey of 1,500 teachers last year found the perceptions of the principal’s role were largely negative.

“The combination of principals struggling with workload, increasing age profile and the lack of interest among the teaching population is leading rapidly towards a leadership time- bomb,” Mr Cottrell said.

Other proposals presented to the committee included more professional recruitment practices to counter perceived lack of transparency in current procedures. A separate salary structure, rather than the current system of allowances on top of the teachers’ pay scale was also recommended to bring the job into line with similar levels of responsibility in other sectors.

The IPPN also suggested that the principal’s job be subject to a seven-year contract, with a facility for those returning to teaching afterwards to keep their seniority and pension levels.