Teachers only working 80% of paid substitution hours
The supervision and substitution (S&S) scheme introduced in 2003 cost the Department of Education around €90 million in 2007, of which €35m was spent in 480 secondary, community and comprehensive schools.
The C&AG John Buckley’s audit during the 2007/2008 school year focused on how the scheme operates at second level. Teachers who sign must provide 37 hours of supervision or substitution cover annually for absent colleagues. They are paid €1,789, based on an hourly rate of €48.35. Schools are given a similar amount to allow them pay outside staff.
Two of the seven schools visited for the audit were unable to provide information on how many hours the teachers who signed up actually worked.
For those with records, it was found teachers provided an average of 30 hours’ cover – just over 80% of the 37-hour commitments.
“In practice, payment is being made for work not completed. While recognising that it is difficult in practice to align the allocation with the drawdown, the scheme should be reviewed to ensure that payment is more closely related to hours actually delivered,” Mr Buckley’s said in his report published yesterday.
This is one of a number of issues being addressed in a review of the S&S scheme, and schools have already been limited in the amount of hours for which they can cover absences for uncertified illness and school businesses since January. The changes were announced amid controversy in last October’s budget, but Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe has achieved savings of €20m in the second level S&S budget as a result so far this year.
The C&AG’s office also discovered a practice in which some schools paid their part-time teachers to supervise for absent staff, instead of those signed up to the scheme.
“The effect is that paid teachers available to provide cover under the scheme are not utilised, while other methods of filling the temporary vacancies are used at additional cost to the public purse,” his report said.
The Department of Education has told the C&AG it will make clear to schools that they should be drawing on the hours already paid for from staff signed up to the scheme before paying others for these duties.
