PRESS RELEASE: JMB Welcomes Enhanced School Leadership and Staffing Allocations

PRESS RELEASE: JMB Welcomes Enhanced School Leadership and Staffing Allocations

The Joint Managerial Body (JMB) welcomes the enhanced staffing allocations, under Circular 0026/2026, to secondary schools from next September and recognises a clear alignment with its long-standing advocacy for an improvement in senior school leadership capacity.

The JMB represents the interests of all voluntary secondary schools in the Republic of Ireland. It is the main decision-making and negotiating body for the management authorities of almost 380 voluntary secondary schools.

JMB President, Mr John Barry said the revised allocations ‘represent a clear and positive step forward from the 2025 staffing arrangements, particularly through the strengthening of leadership capacity in smaller schools. It delivers full elimination of fractional Deputy Principal provision in DEIS settings and a material improvement in non-DEIS schools, while leaving a defined set of schools where further progression to a full Deputy Principal remains to be achieved’.

The JMB’s policy position on establishing a sustainable model of senior school leadership is set out in its Pre Budget Submission 2027, available here, and a summary of its recommendations is appended below. In prioritising the allocation of additional Deputy Principals across an identified range of schools, JMB General Secretary, Mrs Deirdre Matthews, explains ‘We have been making this our key policy position in light of current government requirements on the mainstreaming of virtually all students, including those with profound and enduring special educational needs and the Department’s own prioritisation of leadership for learning within a rapidly changing junior and senior cycle curricular landscape’.

‘The ultimate focus here is the quality of student experience and outcomes provided by every school’, says Deirdre Matthews, ‘and to achieve this, we need a fit-for-purpose level of senior leadership to support staff, parents, and students with the highest levels of availability and authority to make vital decisions and to include everyone in planning for whole-school improvement’.

‘JMB also very much welcomes the Department’s revised DEIS Plan and the emergence of a new DEIS-Plus programme’, says John Barry. ‘Enhanced supports, as these policy developments are implemented, will introduce a much-needed Positive Mental Health and Wellbeing allocation in DEIS Plus schools, as well as improvements in staffing and resourcing to reflect the complexities of serving communities facing significant, multi-layered, challenges’.

Deirdre Matthews concludes ‘These staffing allocation improvements, including limited but dedicated provision for SEN Coordination, demonstrate that the core principles underpinning the JMB Pre-Budget Submission 2027 have been materially acknowledged by Government and the DEY, particularly in relation to the need to strengthen senior leadership capacity in line with school size and complexity. As such, it provides a strong and credible foundation for continued engagement with the Department to further develop and refine the model, with a view to fully realising these principles across all schools’. For further information, please contact info@jmb.ie

Deirdre Matthews, JMB General Secretary,

26th March 2026

 

APPENDIX: Summary of Recommendations

JMB Pre-Budget Submission 2027

Institutional Reform and Infrastructural Capacity

Special Educational Needs

In our sector, voluntary secondary schools are extraordinarily inclusive, innovative, professionally committed, and welcoming communities, building on strong ethical and, indeed, spiritual foundations when it comes to living out each school’s expressed ethos. The recent and ongoing increased investment by the state in the expansion of services provided by the National Council for Special Education is now paying dividends in terms of the support services available to schools and an enhancement of professionalisation at both local and regional levels.

That said, the state’s policy of educating virtually every child and young person in their local, mainstream setting will demand investments in people, plant, and professionalisation if we are, as a nation, to begin to achieve in reality the levels of inclusion to which we aspire in rhetoric.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

  • The JMB urges the Department and Government to avoid reactive, incoherent responses to the increase in demand for special education settings and to commence what the NCSE policy advice recommendation terms ‘The progressive realisation of an inclusive school system’
  • JMB is calling for dedicated professional learning provision to principals and deputies in the area of SEN-specific leadership, and for a significant expansion of funded access for teachers to post-graduate diploma programmes in special education
  • JMB contends that the systems-level knowledge, authority, and agency at school level can best be mediated by a core SEN team working with a deputy principal(s) rather than single-teacher posts of responsibility
  • To enhance their effectiveness and, indeed, status, across the school and system, SETs require their workloads to be manageable, their professional learning and qualifications to be funded and accredited, their capacity to work as effective teams developed, and their identity recognised by the Teaching Council
  • To meet the expansion in responsibility for special education provision at school level, we are seeking a realistic additional allocation of ring-fenced hours calculated on the basis of the school’s SET Allocation as set out in Circular 03/2024 for SEN leadership and coordination
  • The Programme for Government commitments to continue to increase the number of special schools and special classes and to streamline the delivery of modular accommodation will require increased funding to the NDP and a multi-annual commitment to major capital release from DPER and the Department of Finance in the 2027 Budget
  • Principals do not receive any recognition for the additional staffing responsibilities as a result of their SNA allocation, which can be substantial, and this anomaly must be addressed in advance of any changes to this particular sector of our schools’ workforce
  • Under the current SNA workforce review, a structure for in-school management of SNAs should be designed, resourced, and implemented

 

School Leadership – The Challenge of Capacity-Building

The JMB, as its highest budgetary priority, here sets out its case for a progressive extension of the Department’s decision to provide for additional deputy principal capacity in post-primary schools. We make this our key policy position in light of:

  • the changed legislative and regulatory environment emerging as a result of government policy around the mainstreaming of virtually all students, including those with profound and enduring special educational needs, and,
  • the Department’s own prioritisation of leadership for learning within a rapidly changing junior and senior cycle curricular landscape

The need for senior leadership teams to drive meaningful change at all levels of the school has never been more critical. Increased leadership capacity is essential to effect the deep change envisaged by current policy initiatives. 

RECOMMENDATIONS:

  • JMB strongly urges the Department to immediately provide for the allocation of additional deputy principal capacity under a ratio of 1:300 across the majority of post primary schools as a matter of priority
  • No school with an enrolment over 151 should be allocated a fraction of a deputy principal and schools within the DEIS programme require an enhanced deputy principal allocation
  • Basing a school’s senior leadership allocation on student numbers does not comprehend number of staff the principal has to manage, including increasing numbers of SET teachers, Special Class teachers and SNAs. The allocation model should therefore be reviewed and amended to reflect this reality
  • JMB considers that the Department should establish the current extent of administrative supports in schools before developing another layer of admin staffing at grade 5 and develop an evidence-based allocation model of administrative support for all schools
  • In light of evolving policy around inclusion, curriculum, child-protection, anti-bullying, and behaviour management, the required systems-level knowledge, delegated authority, year-round availability, and agency within schools can best be mediated by enhancing capacity at deputy principal level
  • JMB is seeking an independent review with a mandate to reimagine an appropriate leadership and management structure in schools to support quality education. Such a review will require to comprehend the principal’s workload and responsibilities, their wellbeing and psychological health, professional preparation and development, support structures, step-down and exit-routes, and make recommendations for the remediation of a principal recruitment and retention crisis
  • JMB considers the Department should give consideration to the emergence of more clearly defined reporting lines and a tiered leadership structure for teachers, middle leaders and senior leaders, with senior leaders providing sustained strategic leadership and oversight of middle leadership in support of school improvement.

 

Supporting Meaningful Curriculum Change

The centrality of the apex school leader and senior leadership team in terms of curricular change is well affirmed in the literature. Indeed, management and administrative functions, while often burdensome, cannot be mediated in isolation from the vision and values underpinning leadership. The UL finding that ‘curriculum coherence extends beyond the alignment of curriculum goals, enactment, and assessment, and needs to also consider the local school culture and context and the extent to which the curriculum changes align with the school’s values and practices’ represents a clear association between leadership capacity and the establishment of a learning culture in the school. Such capacity challenges are at the heart of the JMB’s reiteration of its call for enhancement measures in the form of additional deputy principal allocation across the sector.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

  • An acceptance of the, now proven, relationship between school culture and the embedding of curricular change demands that the principal and senior leadership team – the chief culture creators – are developed, and supported in their role
  • The 2024 ESRI report and the findings of the UL final report of the impact of junior cycle reform should be carefully considered by the Department and Minister, with policy and resourcing adjustments made in light of its findings
  • In this context, the evident incoherence between curricular intentions and the cultural change in learning, teaching, and assessment practices at junior cycle require immediate attention and resourcing
  • The Department should expand the provision of high-quality professional learning and post-graduate development opportunities for teachers in SPHE and in RSE
  • As senior cycle developments accelerate and are profoundly connected to the experience from first to third year, junior cycle assessment in general requires a system-level response in light of the impact study findings

 

Teacher Supply – A Multifaceted Challenge

Everyone with a stake in the education enterprise has work to do around the urgent need to develop and recruit appropriately qualified teachers to the profession and to create the working conditions under which they will want to stay. Since educators of all kinds are central to the flourishing of a democratic and inclusive civic society, that society itself must act and communicate in ways that recognise the great national asset we have in our values-driven teacher workforce, and affirm the profession in our discourse.

In terms of immediate actions, JMB strongly supports the Department, the Teaching Council, and other relevant agencies in addressing teacher supply challenges from as many approaches as possible. We urge the Minister and her officials to maintain a level of urgency and agency around this crisis as demographic trends alone will not provide any solutions.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

  • The PME programme costs between €6,000 and €8,500 per year for EU students, with total two-year costs typically ranging from €12,000 to over €16,000, making a teaching career inaccessible to a range of social groups
  • The two-year PME programme must therefore be independently reviewed and reconfigured to provide for a deeper single-school embedded experience, under a paid placement model as is the case with other professional development pathways such as nursing and across the wider private sector
  • Strategic and binding proposals to address the issue of inadequate teacher supply must emerge from the national conversation on this issue – self regulation by ITE providers and granular qualification recognition criteria for teacher registration must be addressed as part of this process
  • Experiential, and in particular, teacher wellbeing factors, must be comprehended in mitigating supply, retention, and attrition challenges in the workforce
  • Data on teacher wellbeing should be gathered in the next round of OECD PISA testing

 

Fit for Purpose Staffing Allocations

Ireland already has a higher ratio of students to teaching staff at secondary level than the European average, higher compulsory instruction time per student per year, as well as significantly higher number of hours teaching time per year per teacher. It should not be forgotten that the increase of the PTR to 19:1 in Budget 2009 coupled with the reduction in guidance counselling, EAL, and Traveller support hours from schools (an effective PTR increase), have had a very severe impact on the educational experience being offered in schools.

The pupil teacher ratio for schools in the Free Education sector must therefore be restored to 18:1 in order the alleviate the impact of demographic change at post primary and the impact of the cutbacks on staffing in schools in recent years and the pupil-teacher ratio in fee-charging schools should be reduced as a first step from 23:1 to 21:1. Meanwhile, the allocation for LCA should be increased from 0.5 to 1.0. In a school with 5th and 6th year LCA operating in distinct classes, the school receives just 11 hours additional allocation but must provide 56 hours of tuition.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

  • The pupil teacher ratio for schools in the Free Education sector must be progressively restored to 18:1 in order the alleviate the impact of the cutbacks on staffing in schools during the economic crash and to reduce class sizes to allow for authentic inclusion and differentiated teaching and assessment, as well as providing for the range of subjects envisaged in SCR and flexible learning pathways, while making provision for individualisation of AACs across all senior cycle subjects
  • The allocation for LCA should be increased from 0.5 to 1.0. In a school with 5th and 6th year LCA operating in distinct classes, the school receives just 11 hours additional allocation but must provide 56 hours of tuition
  • The JMB strongly advocates for a review of Circular 04/98 to eliminate the teaching hours of deputy principals, both as an initial essential measure to improve the PTR and to enhance the capacity of senior leadership teams in schools
  • Fee-charging schools, a long-standing and successful example of Public-Private Partnership, are a net contributor to the economy. The pupil-teacher ratio in these schools should be reduced as a first step from 23:1 to 21:1. Deputy principals should not be obliged to erode their leadership duties to make up for an inadequate subject teaching allocation
  • JMB urges the Minister and Department to engage with JMB on a plan to introduce state funded chaplains across our sector as an equity measure.

 

Investment and Funding of Schools

The successes we have seen in our educational outcomes, progression rates, and international attainment rankings have been achieved as a result of state and school partnership. Inflating the policy demand while leaving investment static will only lead to diminishing outcomes, a loss of trust in the partnership approach, burnout and exhaustion at school leadership level, and superficial compliance without deep change.

The requirement for voluntary secondary schools to uniquely source approximately 30% of their day-to-day funding from their families and communities represents perhaps the longest-running failure of the state to treat its citizens equitably.

The JMB urges the immediate index-linking of all capitation grants to allow schools to effectively manage their finances. Under a three-year policy which should readily be agreed at government level, the Minister could significantly reduce the need for schools in our sector to seek voluntary contributions from families, a measure which would alleviate the pressures on all concerned.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

  • All per-capita grant aid to schools must be both increased and inflation-proofed by being consumer price index-linked on an annual basis
  • A government-level commitment must be made to eliminating, over a three-year period, the need for schools to seek voluntary contributions from families by addressing the need for enhanced capitation in all our schools
  • Government must address the inequitable funding of schools in the Voluntary Secondary sector by completing equalisation process
  • Schools in the fee-charging sector are generally grant-aided either 50% or 0% of the rest of the voluntary secondary sector in the free-scheme and this policy should be reviewed in light of the financial pressures on many minority faith schools
  • JMB wishes to see an end to the situation where economically disadvantaged students availing of the SEC block grant to access education in a school of their faith are further disadvantaged by not being comprehended by the book scheme
  • JMB seeks to open a conversation with the Department around a revised funding model for minority faith schools with a view to establishing more equitable treatment of children from such families

 

Resourcing High Quality Guidance and Psychotherapy Services

The JMB continues to seek a meaningful increase in provision for guidance and counselling services in the face of a generation of students with unprecedented needs in terms of an emerging crisis in terms of chronic student absenteeism leading to significant levels of learning and metacognitive skills loss; complex career-plan support needs; as well as the ongoing challenges of traumatised, frequently relocated, refugee children and an redeveloped senior cycle demanding significant guidance counselling in terms of expanded course choices and progression routes.

JMB is also urging the Minister to translate the Programme for Government commitment to ‘Review the mental health and wellbeing pilots that are ongoing in primary and post-primary schools and expand them’, by establishing specialist one-to-one psychotherapeutic supports, especially across schools within the DEIS programme, and also over time all schools nationally, for students experiencing trauma and adverse childhood experiences.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

  • The JMB urges the Minister to expand into post-primary the scheme to deploy emotional counselling/psychotherapeutic supports in primary schools to address trauma, anxiety, and mental health difficulties of vulnerable children and young people
  • JMB seeks a meaningful increase in provision for guidance counselling in the face of a generation of students with unprecedented needs
  • JMB urges the Department to support the training of new guidance counsellors, particularly in light of (a) the cost to individual teachers and (b) substituted release for training, supervision, and work-shadowing
  • In implementing their anti-bullying policies as set out in the Bí Cineálta framework, schools’ most pressing needs centre on time and expertise
  • The adverse treatment of fee-charging schools in terms of their reduced guidance and counselling allocation (based, as it is on a higher PTR), should be discontinued

 

 

ICT in Schools – New Challenges and Evolving Opportunities

JMB very much welcomes the establishment of a standardised payment period for ICT grant funding which will now be incorporated into the annual grant payments calendar for schools. This provides clarity and certainty and will assist schools with their budget management and medium-term ICT investment strategies. The €35 million in ICT grant funding in 2026 under the Digital Strategy for Schools to 2027 nonetheless represents a cut of €15m in 2025 and 2026.

 

As AI continues to shape the future of education, it is important to strike a balance between its benefits and the potential risks, ensuring that it enhances the learning experience without compromising essential human interactions and skills development. Such evolution will require enhanced levels of digital, and indeed, ethical maturity, unforeseen in advance of its emergence and while the opportunities continue to reveal themselves, threats to examination integrity and student online safety cannot be ignored.

 

RECOMMENDATIONS:

  • JMB welcomes the establishment of a standardised payment period for ICT grant funding but the cut of €15m when compared to previous tranches highlights the overall inadequacy of the grant
  • The significantly higher demands placed on schools within the DEIS programme in terms of addressing digital poverty will not be met by an additional €3.02 per student
  • Grant aid must be restored for the purchasing, maintenance, and support of school administration packages, and all software licenses in use in schools
  • To underpin the three pillars of the Digital Strategy for Schools, adequate  funding must provide for school-wide remote device purchase, up-to-date teacher professional learning in digitally supported teaching and assessment, on-site technical and administrative support, and enhanced Wi-Fi infrastructure
  • Adverse treatment of minority faith schools in the fee-charging sector, in which grants such as those for ICT are reduced by 50%, must be discontinued
  • Adequate support must be provided to educators in the face of AI threats to student safety
  • Clarity of expectation must be provided to educators to ensure the integrity of high-stakes examination outcomes

 

 

Providing the Highest Quality STEM Education Experience

The Department’s STEM Education Policy Statement requires targeted investment if its ambitions are to be realised, particularly as its associated Action Plan is completely devoid of spending commitments. The Department must recognise the importance of positive engagement with STEM learning, and this requires the early identification of dispositions within young people and tapping into their enthusiasms. Such identification goes beyond the science classroom and requires a school-wide responsiveness to students’ innate capacities and excitement in terms of enrichment activities. Yet again such a claim on teacher capacity demands senior school leadership support, advocacy, and enabling measures and acts as yet further evidence for the need to increase deputy principal capacity across our school system.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

  • A successor to the current STEM education policy must be coherent with the current Digital Learning Strategy, as schools are currently overloaded with initiatives in all areas of their practice
  • Contemporary STEM education requires that schools are adequately resourced, and the Department should prioritise the provision of:
  1. Laboratory Assistants
  2. Dedicated time for teachers involved in STEM projects with their students
  3. Annualised equipment replacement and software upgrading grants
  4. Appropriate laboratory-class space and storage areas
  5. Dedicated time to coordinate STEM teaching and activities, including health and safety compliance

 

Mitigating Disadvantage

The publication this year of a new DEIS Plan and the emergence of a DEIS Plus Scheme are very welcome, as is the development of an innovative, more school-inclusive, model of DEIS Evaluation by the Inspectorate. Meanwhile, the proportion of students within schools in the DEIS programme demonstrating a clear need for psychological support, assessment, and intervention services remains one of the most serious unmet needs of the contemporary educational system in Ireland.

Participation and subsequent progress are impossible without the student being present – ‘present’ meaning both physically at school and ‘present’ to the learning process, two quite distinct requirements. School communities can, and are, doing everything in their power to provide a school culture that encourages ‘presence’ and those in the DEIS programme going to extreme lengths to follow up on serially absent students, visit families, and address learning loss due to absence. What is needed, however, is a framework of advice, guidance, and support around changing parental attitudes to school attendance, clarity on the rights and responsibilities of all parties, and intervention-level support of external state agencies and authorities in respect of chronic absenteeism in compulsory-age students.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

  • JMB strongly urges the Department to immediately provide for the allocation of additional deputy principal capacity across the complete range of post primary schools as a matter of priority, beginning with the elimination of partial DP allocations in smaller schools and a pro-rata increase in DP allocation to all DEIS schools
  • To address chronic absenteeism, the HSCL Scheme should be expanded to non-DEIS schools with high absolute (as opposed to relative) levels of their student population coming from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds
  • Government must now, as a matter of national priority, commit to equalisation and adequate funding and remove the necessity for schools to seek voluntary contributions from families
  • JMB seeks absolute clarity on the stability of future funding streams in relation to the provision of free schoolbooks and materials, and indeed all grants. Such funding should be secured for schools a multi-annual basis
  • Increased funding to levels established prior to the financial emergency, and immediate index-linking of all capitation grants, represents a more sustainable model than relying on once off cost-of-living measures
  • We request that a detailed review of the free book scheme be undertaken with the views of school management comprehended in any revisions to the model

 

Buildings and Infrastructure

The JMB welcomes the publication in January 2026 of the NDP Sectoral Plan for 2026 to 2030 period. All those school communities whose projects have been included on the list are obviously delighted. However, for those school communities whose projects have not been listed, it has been a source of great disappointment.  Such projects were approved by the Department of Education some years ago; they have gone through all the design stages, and those school communities would legitimately believe that they would now be proceeding to tender and construction. The great number of those projects at post-primary level include provision for SEN and for practical subjects which have already been identified as necessary by the School Building Unit. It is imperative that decisions on the next tranche of projects be made as soon as possible.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

  • A substantial increase in capital funding is required so the programme of major capital projects, Additional Accommodation projects can progress through the tender and construction stages over the 2026 – 2029 period
  • Small Additional Accommodation Projects that have completed design stages should be approved to tender and construction in the current year
  • The Additional Accommodation Scheme is providing much needed additional facilities to schools.  However, there are many schools where the existing buildings are so deficient, that only a whole-school approach is appropriate.  In light of the Energy and Condition Survey of the school estate, the Additional Accommodation Scheme needs to be expanded to cater for the refurbishment of existing buildings
  • Funding for the Schools Energy Retrofit Pathfinder Programme needs to be increased substantially so that a far greater number of schools can benefit from the programme on an annual basis
  • Increased funding for the Emergency Works Scheme is required. 
  • The promised PE Hall programme is long overdue and should be commenced without delay
  • The proposal to introduce a Minor Works Grant for Post-Primary schools needs to be brought forward to 2027
  • A General Purpose Area/Dining Area needs to be allocated to every school and not just to new schools or to those on the major capital programme
  • The programme to provide permanent SEN classrooms in schools should be continued but efforts must be made to shorten the period from approval to construction in the case of a permanent building
  • The grant of €70,000 for repurposing should be increased to meet current costs. 
  • The Department’s Planning and Building Unit requires to be adequately funded so that decisions on Stage Reports can be made within a reasonable timeframe and that funding transfers and queries from schools be dealt with promptly

 

 

 

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