THE DEPARTMENT OF Education has been urged to target its “small” allocation of €3 million for additional deputy principals at DEIS and smaller schools.

In last week’s Budget, €3 million was allocated towards increasing the numbers of deputy principals in primary and post-primary schools.

The National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD) is hosting its annual conference in Galway over the next three days and said it will be calling on the Department to ensure an “equitable allocation” of this €3m funding.

The NAPD said this sum is a “fraction of what is required to meet schools’ needs”.

The overall responsibility of a deputy principal is to assist the principal in the management of the school.

Together, they form the senior management team of the school and the deputy principal is also required to deputise for the principal in their absence.

Paul Crone is the director of the NAPD and told The Journal that supports for school leadership will be the “burning issue” of the annual conference.

He noted that a lot of small and DEIS post-primary schools don’t have a full-time deputy and called for the €3m allocation to be “targeted at those schools”.

Crone said that if a school doesn’t have a full-time deputy, “it impinges directly on the principal”.

He explained: “If the deputy principal is teaching a half timetable, it means they’re not available to support staff and students for half of the week, which means that the principal has to step in there.

“So the principal doesn’t get near some of the administrative and compliance issues that they need to do around child protection, for example.

“Issues around child protection can’t be deferred, so if the principal gets caught up in a child protection referral and the deputy principal is in class teaching, there’s nobody available to support staff or students at certain times in the school week.”

Education Minister Helen McEntee will be at the conference on Thursday and Crone said the NAPD “will make her very aware of our aspirations”.

“While we welcome the €3 million allocation, we will be letting her know that we’re disappointed it is so small, and encouraging her to get the maximum value of the small money that she has at her disposal,” said Crone.

He added that the NAPD will also encourage McEntee to “consider greater investment as soon as possible”.

The NAPD has also compared the €3m available for additional deputy principals to the €9m allocated to measures to ban mobile phone usage in schools.

Crone said the money used on things like mobile phone pouches are not seen as “essential services or supports in the minds of many school leaders, whereas additional deputy principals are seen as vital and essential”.

Meanwhile, the NAPD said it has “consistently warned that schools without sufficient leadership teams are being stretched beyond their capacity”.

A joint study by the NAPD and the Irish Primary Principals’ Network, conducted between 2022 and 2024, found that 45% of school leaders reported experiencing burnout.

The report also highlighted a growing administrative burden on principals – since 2015, the average weekly workload has increased from 48 hours per week to 55, with almost 40% working more than 55 hours per week.